Developing creativity from Matt Whitehouse

http://whitehouseaddress.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/developing-creativity.html

 

KEYPOINTS

Players will make mistakes and young players will make many of them, yet mistakes should be viewed as a key learning tool, because they are very important for a player’s development. For players to develop they require a challenging environment and, of course, they need to make mistakes.


Before receiving the ball a player should be fully aware of the situation and ‘pictures’ which are around him/Her


Painting pictures, for grass roots coaches  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaoyrKAzZY0

There is a new craze which people believe will develop the skills for young players; futsal. Futsal helps to develop creativity in players perhaps more than any other version of small sided football. By its nature it promotes imagination, inventiveness and skill, and also improves decision making and spatial awareness. It promotes players to learn and cope in tight spaces under pressure…a significant issue which many English players struggle with.

The obsession with winning has stopped education, learning and creating skilful and creative players. The problem is many of our young footballers are being placed in the hands of coaches who are not skill ‘developers’ but skill ‘destroyers’. For all the well-meaning coaches who proclaim their wishes to play good football and promote the use of skill…as soon as these coaches get in the ‘heat of the battle’ they forget that they are developers of talent and instead focus solely on the result.

The reason this skill-set is restricted is as follows; firstly the issues above regarding coaching and limiting players. And secondly, the positon specific nature of young players development, being pigeon holed and asked to develop only the skills needed for that position. Players at nine or ten-years-old are being ‘labelled’ as defenders or forwards and being developed for those specific roles. Players should be developed to possess all the key characteristics of being a ‘footballer’. Why not develop an all-round skill-set which allows a player to fit in anywhere?

". Coaches may lose their bottle when results appear to go against them, falling for short termism over long term gains. It is perhaps why so few are genuinely creative in their ways; the fear of failure, a pathway marred by the wrong people.