Teaching Tactical Creativity in Sport: Research and Practice

Creativity is an essential component of sport performance. The player who can make decisions that are both unexpected – and therefore less easily predicted by his/her opponent – and appropriate is the player who is likely to be successful. In this ground-breaking new book Daniel Memmert explores the concept of tactical creativity, introducing a new theoretical framework based on extensive empirical research. He argues for the importance of encouraging divergent thinking abilities at an early age, and explains how tactical creativity sits alongside conventional approaches to 'teaching games for understanding'. The book outlines essential rules for environmental and training conditions, and suggests a wide range of game forms for teaching and coaching tactical creativity to children and young people. This is important to all students, researchers, coaches and teachers working in physical education, sports coaching, sport psychology or skill acquisition.

Daniel Memmert is a Professor and Head of the Institute of Cognitive and Team/Racket Sport Research at the German Sport University of Cologne with a visiting assistant professorship at the University of Vienna, Austria. He is a football and tennis coach with a PhD in cognition and a habilitation in creativity in team and racket sports from the Elite University of Heidelberg. His research interests are cognitive science, human movement science, computer science, and sport psychology. He has 15 years of teaching and coaching experience, and has published more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and 35 books or book chapters. Daniel is a reviewer for several international (sport) psychology journals and transfers his expertise to business companies and several professional football clubs (e.g. German Bundesliga, Champions/Europa League)