What is creativity? If you have to ask, you can't afford it. At least, you'll never understand it. And you certainly won't be able to measure it. To try to define "creativity" is to completely misunderstand the idea. You know it when you see it, but you can't predict it and you definitely can't explain it. Or ... can you?
More so than in any other sport, "creativity" is the key concept at the heart of soccer. In short, you have to "create" a goal. Unlike in baseball, football or basketball, there are no kind of timing or infrastructural mechanisms that are driving one team to attack and the other one to defend, with the pendulum constantly bouncing back and forth between the two sides.
Outside of dead balls, there are no "plays," either. For a team to score, the players have to collectively decide that they want the ball, then they have to collectively figure out how to get the ball, then they have to collectively decide that it's time to move the ball toward the goal, then one individual has to decide that it's time to try to kick or head the ball into the goal.
There is some kind of animating, collective creative instinct within all that, but the movements themselves are often driven by one creative individual. Historically, he wore the No. 10 shirt, but now it might be a No. 17 or No. 66.
We know who the creators are; we literally have a stat for that called "chances created." But not all creators are creative. Bayern Munich's Thomas Muller has been putting in 10-plus-assist seasons for more than a decade, but he's perhaps the least creative great creator of the 21st Century.
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So what do we talk about when we talk about creativity?
A group of researchers in Belgium set up a machine-learning algorithm to answer the question. And while the phrase "machine-learning algorithm" seems like it was created with the sole purpose of destroying the concept of creativity altogether, their work exposes some hidden creatives, highlights how rare the likes of Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne or Liverpool's Trent Alexander-Arnold are, and raises a bunch of new questions about how creativity manifests itself across a 90-minute match.