Creativity

http://topdrawersoccer.com/NationalTeamBlog/?p=256

Creativity? (long)

September 28th, 2007 by Voros · 7 Comments

For those who didn’t catch the women’s game, here are two plays from it that sort of highlight the gulf in creativity between the two sides. I find the first to be as impressive as the second, but both are fantastic:

Great moves, but I think the big key here is the degree to which Ellertson was baffled by them. I think it’s fair to say she was completely unaware that these were the sorts of things players could do in order to shake defenders. Oddly, our lack of invention in attack hurts us defensively as well. There’s no way a defender should allow an attacker to turn the corner the way Marta did on that first play, but it was clear Ellertson dismissed it as impossible. Why else defend the less dangerous area of the field (away from the goal) and leave open the most dangerous area of the field (toward the goal).

Well “Sure,” you say “that’s what you get when you play pick up games in the favelas.” Watch this move honed on the rough environs of the favelas of Hamilton, New Jersey (it’s at the 1:50 mark of the ten minute clip):

You want to get at the root of this problem? A youtube search reveals a second highlight package of the game. Notice Gaven’s exceptional wizardry doesn’t make the highlights. See, the play didn’t result in even a shot on goal, so the thought process (around here anyway) is that it wasn’t worthy of being in the highlights. Marta’s play in the 78th minute also escaped ESPN’s highlight package.

And that’s it in a nutshell. American soccer can’t seem to get it’s head around the concept of understanding that individual brilliance is a process. You’ve got to go out and try things like this on a regular basis in order to get the moment where you can produce it to change the outcome of an important game. A brilliant play is a brilliant play, whether a goal results or not. Appreciating it for its own sake is crucial for it to also appear when it will make a difference.

As for Gaven, a few years ago he exploded onto the scene in MLS as a teenager becoming the youngest player ever to be named Best XI. But I also remember folks like Shep Messing harping on him to stop holding onto the ball for so long, to start making sure you make the simple plays, etc. It was like “sure being able to spin away 360 from a defender is nice, but if you can’t be Claudio Reyna or Michael Bradley and pass square to a defender what good are you?”

The end result was an extremely frustrating stretch of stagnant and uninspired play from Eddie. When he had a little trouble beating players (in the U-20s was a good example) the lesson he took away (presumably from his coaches) was to stop trying rather than to draw on his skills and imprve his efforts on that front. A trade to Columbus under Sigi Schmid and Gaven became an ineffectual midfielder drifting about and causing very little damage.

Gaven’s play has jumped considerably in the last month and a half or so. It’s dangerous to speculate too much from the kind of ignorance I have on the subject, but is it possible the appearance of a Guillermo Barros Schelotto on the Crew has reminded Eddie the sorts of things a player with his skill level ought to be doing with the ball at his feet? Id that it? Do we bring in foreign players and coaches with a background in these kinds of brilliant plays in order to keep us vested in trying to produce them ourselves?

To me, if I see Eddie Gaven pull a move off like that cleanly (and it was 100% clean, the defender never got close to the ball), I never tell him to stop dribbling again. I harp on him to improve the ways in which he approaches those situations, and improve the end product after he wriggles free, but I nevertheless consider myself unbelievably lucky that I have a player capable of making those kinds of plays and do everything within my power to help further develop that talent. I am deathly afraid that’s often an attitude we don’t take in this country.