Gareth Southgate believes coaches must provide the right environment for creative players to flourish.
The England Under-21 Head Coach was a guest speaker at The FA’s Licensed Coaches’ Club Conference which was themed around ‘Developing Creativity’.
Expert speakers from different sports were invited to impart their knowledge to the 800 coaches in attendance at St. George’s Park across the three days. Among the speakers were England Rugby Union Head Coach Stuart Lancaster and world-renowned athletics coach Toni Minichiello.
“For creative players to succeed they need the environment to try things, to feel that mistakes do not matter.”
Gareth Southgate
And with the final day of the Conference focused on The FA’s own practices, Southgate ran a training session with West Bromwich’s Albion’s U18s centred on creative thinking in the attacking third.
He told FATV: "For creative players to succeed they need the environment to try things, to feel that mistakes don’t matter, and the further you go down [the] age groups the more they should be prepared to try things and the less fear there should be.
"As you get older, naturally, there’s a little bit more fear in players and as a coach you’ve got to relieve them of that.
"I’m not convinced you actually coach creativity, I think players will do things naturally that are creative. I think you’ve got to try and create the environment for them to do that.
"Sometimes it’s allowing them to see what creative play is and them recognising that a lot of things they do in the game are creative.
"It doesn’t matter which position you play, you’ll be in positions on the field where you’ve got to come up with a solution [to] get yourself out of a tight area or play a pass through a tight area.
"And players will do it without thinking and not consider it to be creative play."
Southgate is one of many new coaching appointments The FA has made to help improve the future prospects of the England team.
The remit of the former Three Lions defender is to take charge of the Under-21s and to oversee the running of the youth teams from U16 to U19 level.
As well as Southgate, The FA has also brought in - among others - Matt Crocker from Southampton as Head of Coach and Player Development, Mike Rigg from Manchester City as Head of Talent Identification and Dan Micciche as the Technical Lead for 12-16 year-olds, while Neil Dewsnip has the same role for the 17-21 age group.
Toni Minichiello - Empower the athlete
And Southgate says they have all been charged with creating a more joined-up approach across the national teams.
He added: "There’s an acceptance that everybody [at The FA] wants to try and improve things and change the way that we work and the way we ask the teams to play.
"That joined-up thinking is important. If we’re not consistent throughout our age group teams at international level then people could rightly turn round and say ‘well you’re talking about a philosophy of play but I see a disconnect between one age group and another’.
"So the way that we coach and the way the teams play has to be very closely aligned. The general principles of how we play should be the same."
Southgate continued: "We judge everything on the results of the senior team, which is an incredibly competitive environment and just because we haven’t won things at senior level for a long time doesn’t mean everything that happens here is wrong.
"It’s important that we always reflect on what we do and that we always have a desire to improve. But whenever you travel you pick up new ideas but you also see a lot of things that confirm what we do is right.
"Of course there is always room for improvement at every age group and with everything that you try to do, but I think people will have seen this weekend that sometimes when you travel abroad there isn’t a lot different, there isn’t a magic ingredient on the coaching pitch in particular."
