ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the Athletic Skills Track (AST) provides a 'landscape of affordances', which invites behaviours from players in order to learn how to satisfy performance goals in football. AST is an ideal environment for an Athletic Skills Model (ASM) talent development route. The creation of an AST is tailor-made for this challenge, where agility and power are combined in the ASM continuum. Parts of this concept were achieved at AFC Ajax in Amsterdam in 2012. In 2016, an AST facility was installed at the Football Medical Centre in Zeist. In aiming to provide as many basic movement skills, coordinative abilities and conditions of movement as possible, the AST includes multiple components: the fundamental athletic skills track, test and play fields, the PowerHill, the sand box, the wall, the running track, the swimming pool, the ice hockey hall, etc. The ASM has developed the Skills Garden, especially for public spaces, to focus on health, fitness, and sports and activities.
