Most of the time when you receive the ball on a football pitch, everyone around you assumes that you’re going to do something with the front of your foot. That, after all, is where the vast majority of your passes, shots and touches come from. Every now and then, though, an opportunity presents itself to do something rather more unexpected, using the back of your heel to send the ball off in a direction that nobody was anticipating.
That is the beauty of the backheel, a skill that can look absolutely sublime when it comes off and which can pick out a pass that would otherwise be impossible to make.
Back heel, Buxted FC versus Mile Oak by nick macneill, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
At its most basic, the backheel is exactly what it sounds like, which is a pass or a shot performed with the heel of your boot rather than any other part of your foot. The reason it can be so effective is all down to disguise, given the fact that your body will be facing one way whilst the ball ends up travelling in completely the opposite direction. A defender can do everything right in terms of reading your body shape and still end up being left for dead, simply because there is no way for them to know that you’re about to flick the ball behind you in a manner entirely unexpected.
Perhaps the most famous backheel of all was scored by Rabah Madjer, the Algerian forward who used one to score for Porto against Bayern Munich in the final of the 1987 European Cup. Since then, the likes of Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho have produced their own moments of backheeled magic, whether that be finding a teammate with an audacious pass or finishing off a move with a cheeky flick into the net. To carry it off, you allow the ball to run alongside or just behind your standing foot, then bring your other foot across and strike through the ball with your heel, sending it off in the direction you want it to go.
It is worth being aware of the fact that the backheel is a skill you need to use wisely, largely because you have far less power and accuracy available to you than you would with a normal pass or shot. There isn’t much point in attempting an outrageous backheel if a simple sideways pass would do the job far more reliably, so this is very much one for those moments when the situation calls for something a little bit different. The best time to bring it out is when a defender is right behind you and expecting you to shield the ball, or when a teammate has made a run that you can’t reach with a conventional pass.