Dr. Matthew Warwood:
When we talk about creativity, we often focus on divergent thinking, which is generating lots of ideas. But success in sport and beyond also depends on convergent thinking—choosing the right idea in the moment. From free play in childhood to split-second decisions under pressure, sport reveals how these two forms of thinking come together through what’s known as tactical creativity. And yet, creativity in sports is a conversation we rarely either on this show or in the broader field of creativity. So today we’re going to change that as we explore these ideas with sports psychologist Dr. Daniel Mehmet. Hello everyone, my name is Dr. Matthew.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Werwood and my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field of education.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives perspectives of.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
Creativity, all with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
So let’s begin. So today we welcome to our show Dr. Daniel Mehmet, a leading voice at the intersection of sport, creativity, and cognition. Dr. Mehmet is a professor and executive head of the Institute of Exercise, Training, and Sports Informatics at the German Sport University Cologne, where his work bridges movement science, sports psychology, and data-driven approaches to understanding performance. Dr. Mehmet’s research explores how creativity, attention, and decision-making show up in sport. Over the years, he has published more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 40 books, supervised more than 30 PhD students, and secured more than €10 million in research funding.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
And Daniel just doesn’t just study sport from the sidelines. He also holds coaching licenses in soccer, tennis, snowboarding, and alpine skiing, bringing a practitioner’s lens to his scholarship. His work has helped shape how we think about creativity, not just as an artistic trait, but as a core performance skill in sport and beyond. Daniel, welcome to the show. I’m pumped.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Hello, how are you doing?

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
We, we’re doing very good. I have 3 boys, 2 of them immersed in sports, so I’m really, really excited about this episode. But before, before we get into the weeds, creativity and sport, despite the popularity of both, because they’re both popular topics, not many people have really explored the relationship between the two. So just to kick us off, tell us a little bit about what drew you to that connection. Where did it come from? And also, if you don’t mind a second question here, why do Why do you think it’s a topic that isn’t explored that much?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Yeah, thank you. It comes from the idea, and that was about, I think, 2000. Most of researchers, most of coaches thought or practiced according more game intelligence. That means that is the normal decision-making, you could say. What are good solutions on the pitch? And then from the psychology perspective, this is a kind of convergent thinking. So if-then rules, best solutions to a situation. But the psychologists have or had another mechanism that’s not the convergent thinking, it’s a divergent thinking. And so we thought it’s another dimension to think of decision-making.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
So this divergent thinking is a kind of divergent tactical thinking in the area of sport. So we call it tactical creativity. Then in comparison to tactical game intelligence. And these are two very different kinds of approaches, two different kinds of thinking styles. And this was the beginning to study tactical creativity. And I did a lot of work there. At the end, I wrote a book. The second question is why I think it is underdeveloped.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
I would think it is not underdeveloped, but I would think it’s more and more people look at that and you can look at creativity on very different kinds of dimensions for another kind of idea. Which came up in the last couple of years, but we study tactical creativity, so more cognitive skills. So there are some review papers, there are some research in the world, but of course it’s very little if you compare it to the normal decision-making, for example. Creativity came out, another reason I wrote a chapter about tactical creativity. So it’s going on and I have a good feeling that we’ll have more and more results which we can give back. To the practitioners, to the coaches.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
So we’ve talked a lot about divergent and convergent thinking on the show. In fact, we recently had an episode with the head of the American Psychological Association Creativity Division, Ronnie Reiter Palmer, and she talked a lot about convergent thinking and divergent thinking. So if you’re listening and you’re not familiar with that, please listen to that episode. But going back to your point, when we look at divergent thinking in the creativity literature and we think about expanding and generating ideas, is that what tactical thinking is? Generating lots of ideas?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Yeah, that is of course very important for tactical creativity that you have to come up with a lot of ideas. And the psychologist would say fluency, that is the label for that. And that is one factor of tactical creativity.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
So this tactical creativity with fluency, is there, if we look at Guilford’s definition of divergent thinking, we have fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. Do you see those as well in tactical creativity?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Yeah, we use the same one. Of course, we have different kinds of tasks and not with all tasks you can measure all of them, but the normal lab tasks we are using where we have videos and we will stop, we will freeze the videos and the participants had to give solutions to the given situation. Yeah, yeah, that is nearly transferable. Yes.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
So Daniel, before we get too much in the science, we’re talking about the divergent and convergent thinking and we’re talking about tactical creativity now, and I’m trying to, I’m trying to just put my, you know, the hat on of a coach, but also the hat on of a young player. So when we’re thinking about divergent thinking, we’re thinking about generating ideas. And quite often, I know when I was learning my sport, it’s like you receive the ball and it goes this way. You distribute it out to the wing. That’s what you do. And it’s not about divergent thinking. It’s not about, oh, maybe I’ll try this or maybe I’ll try that. It’s like, nope, there’s one solution, one procedure.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
So what I’m hearing, I believe, when we’re talking about divergent and convergent thinking is the, the being open, the fluency to generate alternative ways of moving a soccer ball, for example, from the defense to the offense position without necessarily playing it out from the back or playing it for long. What other possibilities might there be for how you kind of approach that game? That’s the divergent thinking a little bit. Do you see it being different? Is tactical creativity specifically for coaches, or do you also see an opportunity for the players to deviate a little bit from what they’re being told?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
So, first of all, of course, we normally— our normal research is that we try to identify what methodological principle a coach should use to foster tactical creativity with players. Players, different kind of sports. Okay. It could be in team handball, basketball, field hockey, ice hockey. So that doesn’t matter. We normally have the invasion sports. So there are different kind of invasion sports. So that is a really, yeah, a general framework we, we built here.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
So we have a model or either model. It’s now 9 dimensions. So we, that’s a technical creativity approach. And so we help the coaches to tell him how he can improve the tactical creativity of the players. The other point you raised was sometimes it’s only a simple pass to the wing player. That’s correct. Absolutely. It depends sometimes.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
So the soccer, if you stay in soccer, not each pass could be creative or should be creative. Sometimes the passes should just simple and convergent. That means if this is the idea and nothing other happens in the situation, the pass to the wing is the best solution. So a soccer game is not 100% tactical creativity, but have different kind of moments. But if you have this, and I have this very clear in my, in my head, what you said, the pass to the wing, there are some situations when a player runs to the opposite opponent goal, then there’s one free player and he’s on the wing and it could be a pass to the wing player. But of course, a general idea in lots of philosophy of coaches is to bring the ball as quick as possible to the box before the goal. So that I have a situation in mind and we give these kind of situations to our players and see how they decide in that situation. That in this moment, it would be a conversion solution to pass the ball to the wing player.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
But it would be a divergent solution if you would pass the ball straight on to a player who runs in the box and he gets the ball and has a much better likelihood to score a goal. So I hope that answered the question.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Daniel, I’m literally picturing parents of players listening, coaches at my kids’ soccer team. I think what I’m hearing a little bit, and I think I see this, is that on the field you’ve got players that are just going to consistently think convergently. Okay. I’ve been told that the ball’s got to go to the wing. I’ve been told the ball’s got to go to the wing. And you sometimes see that when that play is not available, the player doesn’t consider that as a possibility, but that might be a player who’s not actually developed that tactical creativity. Whereas another player who actually notices, who’s able to identify that actually isn’t the effective solution, even though I’ve been told it again and again and again, that’s not the most effective solution. Oh, wait.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
I see a player free here because obviously the opposing defender’s pushed up here. That’s left the space here. I’m going to go and try that pass. That to me sounds like that tactical creativity, but it’s obviously also a little bit of risk-taking, right? Like that player’s taking a little bit of risk. They’re doing something that they haven’t been told before. So how do we encourage that? Right? Like, how do we celebrate that? Because often I sometimes hear coaches say, all right, all right, all right. You know, try not to do that regularly. You know, you got away with it this time.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
So how do we nurture that type of creativity while trying to make sure that we do have a style of play and people are staying consistent to that style?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Okay, that’s an excellent question. And I have to say a few points on that. First of all, I really believe that on each position on the pitch, you should have tactical creativity. That was very surprising when I gave a talk by the German Football Association 20 years ago, and I said exactly that sentence. A lot of head coaches from the association came to me and said, hey, that’s rubbish. 10 years later, everyone said, yeah, that’s absolutely true. Because the goalie, for example, should have divergent thinking abilities as well, and then a defender also. So now that’s quite true because For example, the behavior of the goalie changed dramatically in the last 15 years.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
So that’s the first thing. The second thing, okay, it’s individual differences. There are some players who are more talented and they have the creative thing. And the third answer or the third dimension is to your question, of course, you can make it simple. I don’t like it in this way, but you can make it simple. A lot of coaches do it simple. They say, if you have the ball next to our goal, It’s like a red zone. You should be creative here.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
You should have clear convergent thing abilities because if you lose the ball, okay, then only two passes and there’s a shot on target. But if we are in the midfield more or less, then that’s the yellow zone. Yeah, that’s a little bit more risk-taking is possible. But if we are in front of the other goal of the opponent team, Then we have the green zone, and there you can be as risky as you like to find good spots, to find good spaces, and to create shots on target. So that’s a very simple way coaches help the player to have a boundary. That I would say, if you have to make it on a higher level, of course, then you have to have creative solutions at the beginning when you build up the play. The game also because the other team is quite good, have a lot of good pressing, then it’s quite hard to, to bring the ball with passes to the other goal. So you can discuss it on different kind of levels, expertise levels.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
So I’m curious about risk-taking in sport, and obviously it’s a big factor. Kids are often afraid to make mistakes on the field. Parents don’t want them to make mistakes, so they have that extra layer. So how do you nurture that risk-taking?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Yeah, that’s a good question. That is absolutely the coach. The coach and the parents, of course, but the coach is a little bit more by the players. First of all, in my point of view, parents should not watch training sessions. Training is training with coach, with the coach and the parents. They should have a nice warm room inside where they can have a coffee And sometimes a coach is by them and talk a little bit about soccer. But watching a training for the kids is not a good idea because of all these things. It’s not only the only thing about creativity.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
There are much more things which can happen. During a match, of course, that’s in some areas in Germany, we try to bring all parents to one zone next to the pitch where we can control them a little bit because of course parents are a big factor in all of that, and they all think that they have the next superstar. And that’s a big problem. The coaches have the feeling or need the feeling to give the freedom to the player. They accept errors and bad passes. That is a kind of learning there. And the coaches have to, yeah, have to have a commitment with that. That’s very, very important.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
And so that is one factor in this creativity model that feedback is not provided immediately. That is a big difference to convergent thinking. By convergent thinking, you should give feedback as soon as possible. By divergent thinking, feedback is not appropriate. You can make a kind of late feedback, maybe next day or something like that in the next training session, but not in the same training session. Creativity can only emerge if you give the freedom to the players and they are allowed to make mistakes. That’s not a problem at all because we have to see the fluency. They have to produce as many possibilities as possible.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
And of course, some of these solutions are not adequate. I say not adequate because adequate is a very important factor to creativity. So creativity is, so technical creativity is defined with unexpected and appropriate. So if you do some things which are unexpected, but not appropriate, it’s not tactical creativity. That is a very important fact, and we learned that with our students. They have to learn that. So feedback should not be given when the small-sided games are running.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
You know, I really like that, and I’m putting my coach’s head back on and also my parents’ head. What I’m hearing you say, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m struggling in the current environment to see how it plays out and the pressure that some of these coaches, even young kids, have to kind of like, I need to build a team. I need the team to look like it knows what it’s doing. I need the team to win. But what I think I’m hearing you say is that I’m teaching convergent thinking, meaning this is how we play. This is where we want to distribute the ball when we receive it. This is who we are looking to pass it to as we move that. We’ll keep with soccer as we move that soccer ball up the field.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
But when a student chooses to do something else, we’ve gotta kind of respond in a way, even if it doesn’t work well, to acknowledge the fact that, okay, they engaged in divergent thinking, they deviated from what we were meant to be doing. And at that point, it’s about teaching them why it may not have been appropriate. So the fact that they could see that, hey, what I’ve been told to do isn’t gonna work, I’ve come up with a new idea of how to distribute this ball. But actually that wasn’t an appropriate pass. Because to your point, if that’s not done carefully, if I’m not listening right now to what you’re saying is I could come in and say, don’t pass it in the middle of the field, don’t pass it across the box. And now that child shuts down and never tries it again. So we don’t want that, but we need to recognize what’s appropriate and not appropriate. How do we do that? I mean, that seems like overwhelming right now.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Appropriate is when the situation can be solved by that solution that is appropriate. It’s quite simple, but on the other hand, during the match, maybe we have two very important things, boundaries. We should talk about that. That makes sense. First is match and training, which is quite different. So during a match, no feedback should come from the singles. Solutions should come from the coaches. That makes no sense.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
During a match, everything is positive. You should motivate them for the next, you try it again, and it’s great. A competition is a competition. You want to win. And each, each player wants to win, 5 years old or 10 years old. So that is, that’s for sure. So during a match, it’s totally different how you should coach as you’re coaching a small-sided game. That’s one fact.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
And the other fact is it’s about age of the players. That means with We say to 12-year-olds, something like that, you should never train convergent technical thinking. So till 12 years, 11, 12, 13, there’s of course not an absolutely, but something like that, you should only train divergent because they, the players should learn to find different kind of solutions that could be crazy, that could be sometimes not required, that doesn’t matter. So when they get older. Of course, you have to implement a kind of system. Okay. Before that, you don’t have a real striker and a defender. Each should play each position and sometimes the striker should go at the goal.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
That, that doesn’t matter. I have a good example from the FC Barcelona. FC Barcelona teach or train till 15 years old, 15 years old. Each player who’s allowed to play in La Masia, which is a great honor, of course, it’s very difficult to step in only as a striker. So they don’t teach defense action. Why should they teach defense action? We want to score goals. And if you score 10 goals and we get 9, then we win the match. And if he gets 11, that doesn’t matter because 10, a lot of players have good motions about scoring a goal.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
So at the beginning, the defense is not so important. The implicit children learn to try to get the ball back, but we teach scoring, score, score, score, score. And when they are 15 years old. What, what are you doing? The coaches in La Masia, the best strikers, they’re all strikers, but the best strikers, when they’re 15 years old, they will go on in striking. And these players who are not so good as strikers, they will go in the defense. But always have in mind how you score goals. And I think that is very important to, to know in which time window you should train and foster which kind of principles and and what kind of abilities. And, uh, I give a lot of talks and coaching education about that, how the curriculum should be and how they should train with the players.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
I’d love to hear more about that because you have this wonderful blend of being a coach and then doing all the research on it. So when you’re watching other coaches, are there things that you think, oh no, don’t do that, or you should do more of this? Can you give us some more examples of that?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Yeah, I think it depends what kind of background the coach had. For example, if there’s a father with no teaching license in soccer, but he’s with the kids and he trained with the kids, then I would say it’s great. It’s great. It’s his time. He gets no money, nearly no money for that, but it’s better to have the kids on the pitch than have the kids somewhere else. So that is perfect. But of course, if you have coaching license, then you have another kind of expertise how you should work. With the players and then you can differentiate a little bit.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
I had one example that is really a negative example. I had it in a very high level. So it was an under-19 in the German Bundesliga, a coach who coaches the whole match. And I said, you should not coach the players during a match. That is different kind of levels. It’s not a good idea because for them it’s so stressful and the working memory is filled with so many information. The spectators and everything, and it’s so high pressure. It’s not a teaching during a match, it’s a performance.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
They should perform, but they, they learn maybe implicit something in the match, but the, the coach is not needed here. And, and this coach, um, give instructions, and the wing player and the coach were exactly on the same side, and the wing player was each minute he was texted from the coach. It was a little bit It was not funny, but it was after 50 minutes, the player was done. The player could not pass a single ball because the whole time the coaches say something. So that is on high level. So as said, during a match, it’s performance and you should motivate to bring good performance. The learning, the main learning is during a training session.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
You know what, I’m just sitting here thinking as well, to a certain extent with the young kids, it’s the same as anything. We’ve got a, we’ve got a rigid curriculum. We’ve got, you must learn this, you must do this. And it gets more and more serious as we kind of progress through the grades. And what I’m listening is that it sounds like it’s really important for kids to just have this environment, this opportunity where they can just play, have fun, try things out, engage all of that divergent thinking, and it’s not in a serious environment. And, and maybe that’s one of the things that we might be losing is not just in sports, but just across the board in everything, piano, you know, everything’s becoming so serious, so rigid that there seems to be very little opportunities for kids to engage that type of divergent thinking. Would you agree?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
I would agree. And we have one principle because at the beginning you said in the first sentence, must. If you say must, you have now to look a little bit in the social psychology because there are lots of studies It is demonstrated that each word counts. If I change one word instruction, I can change the performance at all. Though we know, and we, we tested it, we have some publications here that when you want to train and foster tactical creativity, you should never say must. Must is something where you have a duty to do that, must. But we know from our own publications and research that you should, if you want to foster tactical creativity, you should say you have the possibility. Yeah, you have the possibility to take this, but you must do that.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
So we can demonstrate that in one word. With one word, I can change performance and tactical creativity.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Where does this rank? Is it okay, you got to get fit, you got to get fast, you’ve got to develop your kind of knowledge of the game or the sport you’re playing. You’ve got to learn to persevere. You’ve got to develop obviously your skillset. And now we’re going to say you, you have to develop the tactical creativity. From a construct that you’ve studied, how important is tactical creativity to success in sports?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Yeah, good question. First of all, we have a study here published in Journal of Sports Science, the most important sport journal in the world, where we can demonstrate it quite nicely with a sample of the highest tournaments, the World Cups and European Cups in soccer, that technical creativity is on this level the factor which decides if you came up from the group stage to the last matches then for the quarterfinal, for example. So that is really important on high level that you have this ability to be creative. And on the other hand, and you have talked about some running performance, technical skills. Of course, they are all important, but we say now this kind of knowledge we know in the world of sports science, that the creativity, the cognitive skills in general, that’s not only creativity because we know that technical creativity is linked quite closely to attention. Attention skills are very important. So all cognitive skills have become so, so important. And as a researcher, we studied that the last time.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
We have books about soccer and only focus on the cognitive skills because we, we see that when we watch games and when we analyze games, that in running performance, sprints, and all different kind of things, they level out, that, that is equal between teams. But the most important factor points are the head, the mind. So we say the matches are decided in cognitive skills. And there are several cognitive skills, and I have a framework where these are listed for anticipation, perception, attention, convergent, divergent decision-making, and at the end, working memory. So all of these cognitive skills are so important for athletes to get the last percentage to win matches.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
Well, Dan, it has been a great episode, and I’m so excited that I finally got to learn something about creativity in sports, and I can’t wait to get a copy of your book. And if you’re listening, make sure you check out our show notes where we will post the link to the book.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
There.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
But before we go, we do have a final question, which is, what is your most creative educational experience and why? Can you give us an example?

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
Yeah, I was in Australia 2 weeks before and was in Sydney, football, of course, soccer, Sydney SC, and then of course in Melbourne, the Australian Open. And in Melbourne, there’s, I didn’t know that, but in Melbourne is one of the, or it’s the biggest Holocaust museum in Australia and New Zealand. And I had the pleasure to get a tour there, a guided tour. And for me, it was really creative how, what kind of ideas they had to bring this really sad things to our mind. Oh, I have to see that I don’t cry. And they give us children, one we could select, one children, and we follow the historical or the life of this children. Before the war and after the war. And that was a very creative idea, how you can step in.

Dr. Daniel Memmert:
So you don’t have to talk about war. It was nothing about war in this museum. It was only the story of the children before war and after war. I think this idea to bring historical stuff, very important historical stuff, I have to say, to our mind, that was brilliant.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Well, Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It’s been a wonderful podcast, perhaps in some ways an outlier, because as Cindy said, we haven’t covered so much around sports. But that being said, if you are a listener to our podcast and you kind of know someone, it could be a gym teacher, it could be a coach for one of your children’s sports, feel free to share this particular episode with them. And hopefully we can get more coaches and teachers thinking about creativity in that domain as well. Don’t forget also to subscribe to our podcast channel, fuelingcreativitypodcast.com. And my name is Dr. Matthew Warwood.

Dr. Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Cindy Burnett and Matthew Warwood. Our podcast assistant is Anne Fernando, and our editor is Sheik Ahmed.