Around the world, fans flock to witness the creativity and wizardry of the great players, those who stand tall amongst the many. Here in New Zealand, our own national Talent Development Manual recommends allocating 50% of training time to attacking moments because “New Zealand Football believe that pro-active, creative attacking is more difficult to learn…”. How then should we go about fostering and cultivating this creativity?

Talent Identification Programmes (TIP), Talent Development Programmes (TDP), National Age Group Centres and their iterations are pervasive across all our national sporting bodies. Football of course is no exception, with our own governing body devoting an entire drop-down menu on their website to the subject of “Talent”.

With the regular 2023 football season fast drawing to a close, we can all start to look forward to warmer climes, longer days and weekends with family and friends. However, the end of the season also signals the start of anxiety and tension for thousands of young aspiring players up and down the country.

Navigate your way to any football club or federation website in New Zealand and you cannot help but come across something pertaining to the latest and greatest player “pathway”.

The game of football is played 11 vs 11, whether a team is in possession of the ball or not. 11 players work collectively to protect their goal when they don’t have the ball. So, there is no reason it would be any different when attacking the opposition’s goal. The question then that needs to be asked is this.

Croatia, a nation of only four million people, has made the final of the FIFA World Cup becoming the smallest country to make the final since Uruguay in 1950. With arguably the player of the tournament in midfielder Luka Modric, what is its secret to producing great players?