Developing Creative Players

Creative behaviour can be decisive in football since players will be able to solve training and game problems in unpredictable ways leading to advantages over opponents. Understanding how coaches can develop creative players across all levels of the game is a paramount question widely debated among researchers and practitioners. Historically, the creative players springing to mind such as Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta and Andrea Pirlo, to name but a few, all have common traits: the creative mindset and ability to play the unexpected pass or perceive things differently to other players and coaches. To guide coaches throughout this creativity development journey, the first section of this chapter contextualises the developmental trends of creativity in football, encompassing the framing of the concept, expressions and components. This part also introduces modern, unique and comprehensive frameworks (e.g. Tactical Creativity Approach and Creativity Developmental Framework) proposed to encourage a creative disposition during the early years, such as divergent thinking, deliberate play and diversification. Finally, the first section highlights a more specific teaching model titled Skills4Genius. Based on the complex systems approach, the second section of this chapter provides a description on how football coaches can manipulate different constraints to release the exploratory behaviour among the players (i.e. by promoting unbalanced situations). In the third section, the design for a ‘creativity-supportive learning environment’ and barriers associated with understanding and working with creativity in football are the central points of discussion. This section presents The Creative Soccer Platform, which covers four pedagogical principles intended to reduce the impact of a range of professional, cultural and social aspects that limit creativity in the specific football context. Moreover, the section presents six ideas that may be applied to create new and modify existing football tasks, thereby challenging and disrupting the players’ normal behaviours. Finally, implications for coaching practices, training session design and take-home messages are outlined.