Creativity in Soccer
Every single soccer match is comprised of the exact same components: twenty-one players, three officials, two coaches, two goals, a ball, and a clock counting down from ninety. How could such a routine and mundane set up produce what is known across the globe as “the beautiful game”? Four year old Katie was asking herself the same question, just phrased a little differently.
My first encounter with soccer was not love at first sight in the slightest. I had been placed on a team with a bunch of strange children I had never seen before, and had no inclination to interact with. My mom was home caring for my newly born sister and my dad, who had this day circled on the calendar for months, was coaching the team. Ten minutes into the practice, I had grown bored of kicking the ball around and wandered off to the inside of the goal to pick grass. The only thing my father wanted more than to share the sport he’d fallen in love with with his first child, was to raise me in a manner where I knew quitting a task was unacceptable. He was unable to coax me into joining the rest of the team, but he told me sitting on the sideline would not be permitted and that if I didn’t want to play, my only option was to run circles around the field. Although I was exceptionally stubborn, I grew tired of running and quickly rejoined the rest of my team. When my parents tell the story of my first soccer season, they equate trying to get me to the field with pulling teeth, however they said I had a blast once I actually arrived and started playing. The sport I had initially found boring was slowly starting to be the most captivating aspect in my life.
The first time I recall inserting my own creativity into the sport was when I was around ten years old, playing club soccer for the first time. My coach was teaching us how to do individual skill moves. Many of these moves were named after famous soccer players who created them. Argentinian player Diego Maradona invented a move called the Maradona, Dutch footballer Johan Cryuff is responsible for the development of the Cryuff turn, and Cristiano Ronaldo is of course credited with the creation of the iconic Ronaldo chop (which is actually the same exact move as the Cryuff turn, but let the Portuguese lad have at least one thing Messi doesn’t). It takes an immense amount of creativity to use any of these moves in a game. You have to read the pace of play, analyze patterns of your defender, recognize where you are in relation to everyone else on the field and then technically execute your move. Creativity is woven into a soccer match with every unique touch and move a player does. Sure, there are patterns, but the player on the ball has less than a second to make a decision of what to do with it that changes the trajectory of the entire game. Like the greats, I also wanted to invent a move and name it after myself. I spent that whole season perfecting the “Wojcik spin”, a super complicated and impractical move that I haven’t used or thought about in years. Although this move would not be known across the globe, or probably used by anyone other than 10 year old Katie during youth soccer matches (unsuccessfully I may add), it helped me feel like I had contributed to the sport and encouraged me to always put my own creative spin on any match that I’m apart of.
I also discovered that there are less structured ways to use soccer as a creative outlet. Much of my free time as a child was spent in the backyard with my sister attempting absurd soccer trickshots, like trying to hit a water bottles placed across the beam of my swingset, trying to chip a ball in one of our trash cans, or simply seeing how many times I can touch a ball before it hits the ground. Soccer was no longer a sport, but an integral part of my life that I thought about everyday.
As I started to play at higher levels, the game changed and became less about individual players, and more about the team as a whole. Creativity in soccer was no longer defined solely by what you do when you get the ball, but by the way a team is organized and moves the ball together. Creativity can be seen in a through ball, a combination play between multiple players, a drop pass, or even a dummy run that distracts the defender without ever touching the ball. Before every match this season, my coach writes words on our whiteboard that we look at during our pregame talks. These words usually rotate between tenacity, ruthless, critical, adaptable, fluid, execute, sharp, fearless and fast, but one time this season, creative was included among the words. When my coach spoke towards it, it reminded me of what soccer meant to me as a kid. Playing at the college level is stressful, it’s easy to get caught up in the wins and playing time, and I often forget why I do it in the first place. Since that pregame talk, I have carried the feeling of pure joy and willingness to try new things on the field with me. Creativity is what makes soccer enjoyable and without it I would still probably be more interested in picking grass with four year old Katie.
