An Ode to the Dink: Football's Most Under-Appreciated Maneuver

If a lob is from further out then the chip is probably similar in a lot of ways, but closer to the goal. Both have the element of catching an unsuspecting keeper off-guard, taking advantage of poor positioning to find the net. Clint Dempsey sending Fulham to the Europa League final is a textbook chip:

Then we have the dink. You just know a dink when you see one. If there are some parameters, they would probably be:

1. Must be moving towards the goal
2. Keeper must be in some way closing the attacker down
3. The ball must travel over the keeper's body (with one notable exception)

Now the dink is far more art than science, so these rules are simply a guide. There are goals that may straddle the categories or could be argued as one or the other, but the impudent dinked finish when pulled off is truly the most exquisite of all.

Unsurprisingly, the greatest footballer of all time, Leo Messi, is a huge proponent of the dink. When you score the quality, range and sheer amount of goals that he has, it’s difficult to pinpoint one over the other, but this finish over World Cup and Champions League winning Manuel Neuer is just a textbook dink:

One that has maybe been lost in the history books due to the match's wild second half and beyond is Hernan Crespo’s dink against Liverpool in the 2005 Champions League final. The perfect pass from Kaka, the perfect run from Crespo and that finish. Almost a micro-dink, this offering shows that—unlike the chip and the lob—the dink doesn’t rely on height to beat the keeper.

Here's an example of the murkiness, the cross-pollination of the dink and the chip with Henrik Larsson finding the net for Celtic in football’s biggest derby. OK, this is a total homer pick and may be my personal favorite goal of all time, but bear with me.

I can see the argument for it being more of a chip, the distance is certainly right on the boundaries and maybe it travels just a little too high. Spiritually though, it’s a dink and it fits the earlier rules. So, for me, DINK.

The notable exception in the rules of the ball travelling over the keeper is the ‘Panenka’. A glorious subset of the dink, the Panenka utilizes the technique of the dink from the penalty spot and embarrasses the keeper diving off the side as the ball slowly arcs into the middle of the net.

This iteration is named after the innovator, Antonin Panenka, who chose the last penalty in a shoot-out to unveil his miraculous creation. That shoot-out being the final of Euro ‘76, where unfavored Czechoslovakia defeated Germany with his dink down the middle.