What Is Creativity

On Monday night after I was done training the U16's Eric and I had a great conversation with Greg Wheaton about what creativity really is.  Greg hails from Brazil and is the best dribbler of the ball I have seen and he was my favorite coach growing up.

Greg mentioned that he was going to be taking his U15 boys team to Brazil this year and how he was excited at how much they are going to learn about the game from the trip.  They are going to play against players who are a year or two younger than them who will be able to dribble the ball just as well, if not better, than they will.  But the key that the Brazilians will possess is that they will pick their time to dribble.

Too many players here, in the US, mistake creativity with being able to do a ton of moves.  Just doing moves for the sake of doing moves isn't creative.  It is stupid.  

Think about the difference between Cristiano Ronaldo in his first two years at Manchester Utd.  He just dribbled around aimlessly and rarely created anything.  Sure it looked cool, but it wasn't creative and a majority of the time Utd ended up losing the ball.  

Now every time Ronaldo touches the ball there is the threat of a goal being scored.  That is creativity because now there is an end result to what he does.  Creativity can be as simple as an inside of the foot pass that puts someone in on goal with a through ball or it can be 3 step overs, a maradona, and a fake shot to beat a 3 defenders before scoring.  They are both creative because the end result is there.

It is important for us as coaches to start teaching the kids at a young age what creativity really is and show them all the different ways that it can be achieved.