Chip Passing Technique

• Plant your non-kicking foot alongside and slightly behind the ball. Point your toes and knee towards your target – this brings your body into the correct alignment for a straight pass.
• Keep your head steady and your eyes looking at the point of contact on the football.
• Point your kicking foot down and strike the bottom of the ball with the top of your foot. Kicking beneath the horizontal midline will lift the football.
• Because a small part of the foot has to contact a relatively small part of the ball, chip passes are easy to miscue and slice off-target. Concentrate on hitting the ball directly on the vertical midline, as kicking on either side of the ball will reduce accuracy.
• Control your kicking leg after the contact. Stopping your swing will give the ball more back-spin, making the pass pitch up and drop more dramatically. However, you may need to add more of a follow-through to increase the weight of the pass and play your chip over longer distances.

Here’s a “grandissimo” example of a chip from Francesco Totti being used to completely surprise the Inter Milan defence. In the replays you can really notice the spin on the ball as it dips: