Exploring the multifaceted role of creativity in an elite football context

ABSTRACT

In recent years, creativity in team ball sports has been portrayed from several theoretical perspectives. Despite the growing research in the area, there is a lack of studies on practitioners’ understanding of creativity. Growing out of and informing practices in continuous cycles, coaches’ conceptions are shaped by transactions between social and cultural processes and the coaches’ personal interests and desires. Therefore, coaches acquire unique and changeable sets of conceptions. Hence, the purpose of this study was to explore, analyse and contrast qualitatively different conceptions of creativity in football. Specifically, we mapped the different ways in which coaches from the Danish club Aalborg BK conceived of creativity, its importance in football, and its application in practice. The main data production comprised 18 semi-structured interviews, and, among other methods, participant observation of day-to-day practices at four elite youth teams was applied to ground interpretations in contextual knowledge. Phenomenographic analysis led to 15 metaphors, which capture varied meanings, benefits and applications of creativity in football, i.e. surgicality, productivity, navigation, choreography, circus, design, survival, deception, independence, co-creation, style, exploration, transgression, magic and invention. These results may stimulate more nuanced dialogues about creativity. Contrasting the coaching interests served by the metaphors, we show how diverse conceptions emerged and operated to 1) enable solving of in-game problems, 2) stimulate engagement, 3) facilitate learning, or 4) enhance the chance to win matches. These orientations involve diverse ways to apply creativity. While some bearings entail promising potentials for development settings, others may have limiting consequences for players experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport coaching
• creative soccer players
• creativities
• pragmatism
• talent development environment

Acknowledgments

We want to express our gratefulness to our colleagues from Sports and Social Issues at Aalborg University for co-creative sparring and surgical reviews of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ludvig Johan Torp Rasmussen

Ludvig Johan Torp Rasmussen, MSc in Sport Sciences, is a third year Ph.D. fellow in Creativity at the Department of Health Science and Technology, Sport Sciences, Aalborg University. In his Ph.D. work on the multifaceted role of creativity in sports, creativity is grasped from qualitative, developmental, experiential, socio-cultural, pragmatist, and applied perspectives. As a part of his Ph.D., the paper, Creativity as a Developmental Resource in Sport Training Activities (2017), was published in Sport, Education and Society. Ludvig supervises and teaches in creativity, coaching, learning, culture, talent development, and sport psychology at Sport Sciences, Aalborg University.

Vlad Petre Glăveanu

Vlad Petre Glăveanu, PhD, is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology and Counselling at Webster University Geneva, Associate Professor II at Bergen University, Norway, and Director of the Webster Center for Creativity and Innovation (WCCI). His work focuses on creativity, imagination, culture, collaboration, and societal challenges. He edited the Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture (2016) and the Oxford Creativity Reader (2018) and co-edited the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Across Domains (2017) and the Oxford Handbook of Imagination and Culture (2017). He co-edits the book series Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture for Palgrave Macmillan. Vlad is editor of Europe’s Journal of Psychology (EJOP), an open-access peer-reviewed journal published by PsychOpen (Germany). He received in 2018 the Berlyne Award from the American Psychological Association for outstanding early career contributions to the field of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts.

Lars Domino Østergaard

Lars Domino Østergaard, PhD, is Associated Professor at the Department of Health Science and Technology, Sport Sciences, Aalborg University. His main research foci are pedagogical, educational and didactical issues within sport and physical education with special focus in Inquiry Based Learning as a methodology to enhance and develop the participants’ motivation and learning in the respective areas. He supervises and teach in motivational, educational and methodological aspect of sport sciences at PhD and Master level.