HOME SESSIONS ABOUT US CONTACT US
DEVELOPING CREATIVITY
"Young players should not be pressured by their coach to quickly pass the ball in order to allow for better team-play and winning. They should frequently have the opportunity to be in love with the ball, to dare to improvise their play and take risks, without fearing the possible consequences of having committed a mistake or to have lost the possession of the ball"
- Horst Wein, German university lecturer, Olympic medal winning coach, author of over 30 books on coaching, youth coaching expert
1. Tips for developing creative players
- Don’t expect all children to come up with the same answers to the challenges they face.
- Embrace variety, and help children to do the same by sharing the answers they come up with. (“Matt, show us all again how you managed to get past the defender”). This will help them to learn from each other.
- Encourage mistakes. Often many mistakes are necessary before success happens. Reward experimentation with praise.
- Help players understand why and how something failed or succeeded, encourage them to think creatively.
- Allow play to happen, don’t stop games repeatedly.
"Can you teach creativity by getting kids to copy ten tricks used by the top Brazilian players of all time? But who taught the Brazilians?" - Paul Cooper, co-founder of Give Us Back Our Game
Click here and here for more from Horst Wein on developing creative players.
2. The teaching style
"As a coach we need to be clever and creative at finding ways for young people to learn for themselves. Did you learn how to use a computer from someone telling you what to do the whole time or by exploring and finding your own way round it? Do music teachers sit in piano lessons shouting at children "black key, white key, white key"?
- Nick Levett, The English FA
Coaches need to think about when and how much to use a command style of coaching. Certainly, all coaches at MoF need to use a variety of coaching styles, but in order to help children develop creativity we need to give them the freedom to explore football activities for themselves.
For example, setting children a scenario ("you are 2-0 down with 5 minutes to play, how will you change your tactics?") is a great way of exploring the imagination, creativity and game understanding of young players. They may come up with different ways and methods you might not have considered but they need to be given the chance.
Allow children the chance to develop their own way of doing things. Remember that learning is a mysterious process and one that we are all still engaged in (coaches too!). Don't be too rigid, allow players the opportunity to suprise you with their creativity.
3. The importance of Creativity
Success in adult football often arises from making the most out of the few moments of possibility that arise in a game. Games can be chaotic and frantic. Yet at times, there suddenly appears a moment of opportunity. In some games, these opportunities arise only once or twice, and we need to develop players who can recognise how to create these moments and how to take advantage of them when they occur.
The Dutch landscape painter Hans van der Meer has excelled in taking memorable photographs of Dutch football. He usually works high in the stands, usually near the halfway line, from where he aims to capture what he calls 'the moment of tension':
"Every Monday in the newspapers you see the same stupid, boring close-ups taken from behind the goals with long telephoto lenses which distort the space. Those pictures show you football situations but you have no idea what they mean. Two players fight for the ball. So what? Where on the pitch are they? ... Football is a game of space. So why should you leave the space out?"
When we coach children, we need to make them aware of the space around them in order that they begin to recognise when and where they can best use their creativity. Young footballers need to constantly experiment with trying new things in order to learn what's possible given the space and movement around them. Van der Meer describes these moments of possibility very well:
"There are one or two moments when a situation develops and you understand something will happen. This is the moment of tension, or possibility. This is what I look for. You see the possibilities. The next moment they are over - the game moves to something else. Everyone in the crowd shares this tension. The pleasure of going to football is that you all feel this together. It's like chess. When newspapers report a chess game, they don't show you the final move. They show you the dramatic position ten moves from the end because that is the most dramatic situation. The midfield is often more dramatic than the penalty area. The moment of the goal is not particularly interesting. What happens before the goal: that is much more interesting."