Creative play: unlocking movement variability

This session features two activities aimed at enhancing players’ creativity and adaptability. The “Exploratory play: in and out numbers game” fosters quick thinking by varying team sizes, encouraging players to creatively respond to changing numerical scenarios. In contrast “Street football: adapt and play” simulates street football, incorporating movement, task, and physical constraints to develop functional and adaptive movement solutions.

Together, these activities provide some examples of how coaches can manipulate practice design to enhance creativity and adaptability.

These activities stand out because they focus on two critical aspects of player development: creativity and adaptability. In today’s fast-paced game, young players must think on their feet and adapt their movement responses to the various dynamic situations of the environment. These activities encourage players to explore their creativity on the field, fostering an environment where they can express themselves freely while also developing various functional and transferable movement skills.

You can incorporate these types of activities into weekly training sessions. The second activity in particular is especially relevant for youth players, who should be exposed early to opportunities that help them acquire functional and transferable movement skills.

EXPLORATORY PLAY – IN AND OUT NUMBERS GAME

We set up on a pitch of 40 x 30yds. The aim here is to improve creativity and tactical behaviour. The game involves varying the number of players on each team to create numerical advantages and disadvantages. Each player is assigned a number (1 to 5) on each team. The game starts as goalkeeper + 5v5 + goalkeeper.

At random intervals (approximately every 30 seconds), the coach will call one to three players from each team to leave or rejoin the game, depending on whether their number is called. If a player’s number is called while they are on the pitch, they must exit; if they are off, they must rejoin. This creates fluctuating scenarios such as 5v4, 3v2, 2v4 etc. Double points are awarded to teams if players perform different passes, dribbles, or shots. We run this for 15 minutes.

You can progress this by using different sizes of balls to enhance movement adaptability. When player numbers are balanced (eg 5v5) introduce two balls to develop players’ breadth of attention, a key perceptual skill for creative decision-making.