Why a rainbow flick invites the tackle that follows it

Key takeaways

• The rainbow flick is a legal skill move in the Laws of the Game, and there is no provision that makes attempting it an offence in itself.
• Because the flick sends the ball over a defender's head rather than past their feet, it forces the defender to turn and chase from a standing start, which changes the geometry of the challenge that follows.
• Referees judge the tackle that follows a flick by the same criteria as any other challenge: contact, force, and whether the defender plays the ball or the opponent.
• Coaches disagree about whether high-risk skill moves in congested areas are worth the turnover risk, and that disagreement is about expected value rather than aesthetics.
• Defensive coaching has increasingly emphasised delaying and jockeying rather than committing to the ground, partly because a mistimed lunge after a beaten first contact carries a disproportionate cost.

What actually happens in a rainbow flick

The rainbow flick, sometimes called the lambretta or okocha, is executed by trapping the ball between the heels or between one foot and the opposite calf, then flicking it upwards and forwards over the head of both the executor and a nearby opponent. The player runs on to collect it on the far side. It is a low-percentage move by design: it requires the ball to be near-stationary or rolling gently, it needs roughly a second of unimpeded time, and it commits the attacker to a fixed trajectory that cannot be aborted once the heels have gripped the ball.

That commitment is the tactical crux. Most dribbling actions retain optionality — a step-over can be abandoned, a drag-back can be re-drag-backed. The rainbow flick cannot. From the moment the ball leaves the ground, the attacker is running to a spot that both players can see, and the contest becomes a foot race to a predictable landing point rather than a duel over an unpredictable ball.

Why this is being discussed now

Clips of individual skill attempts circulate widely on football forums and video platforms, and the ones that generate the most discussion are almost always those where the skill and a defensive challenge collide. The pattern is consistent enough to be worth analysing structurally rather than incident by incident: an attacker attempts a flourish, a defender arrives, and viewers divide sharply over whether the resulting contact was a fair tackle, a foul, or something the attacker invited.

The recurring nature of that argument is the story. It is not that any single challenge sets a precedent — it does not — but that the same disagreement recurs because the underlying situation genuinely sits at the boundary of several coaching principles at once.

The background a newcomer needs

The Laws of the Game, maintained by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), do not enumerate permitted or forbidden skill moves. There is no rule against flicking the ball over an opponent, just as there is no rule against a nutmeg or a Cruyff turn. The one relevant historical caveat concerns what happens after: a player may not be penalised for playing the ball in an unusual way, but the separate offence of playing in a dangerous manner applies when a player's action threatens injury — most commonly a high boot near an opponent's head.

In practice, the rainbow flick rarely triggers that provision, because the foot travels upwards behind the executing player's own body rather than towards an opponent's face. The dangerous-play question more often runs the other way: if a defender's head arrives under a rising ball, contact between boot and head becomes the referee's problem, not the flicker's.

For the tackle itself, the assessment framework is unchanged by the skill that preceded it. The referee considers whether the challenge was careless, reckless, or made with excessive force, and whether contact with the ball preceded or replaced contact with the opponent. Winning the ball is not, on its own, a defence — a challenge can take the ball and still be reckless in how it does so.

Who is affected and how

Attackers carry the turnover risk. A flick attempted in a wide area, with a touchline as a natural boundary and support behind, costs little if it fails. The same move attempted centrally, with the attacking team's rest defence unset, exposes the whole structure to a transition. Attacking coaches generally regulate skill attempts by zone rather than by prohibition.

Defenders face a specific problem: the ball is momentarily out of reach for both players. A defender who steps towards the attacker risks the ball landing behind them; a defender who drops risks conceding the space the flick was designed to create. The default modern coaching answer is to stay side-on, delay, and force the attacker to land the ball into pressure rather than into space.

Referees must decide these in real time, with the visual noise of an aerial ball and two players converging on a landing point. The flick often produces a moment where both players are looking up, which increases the likelihood of unsighted contact — a category referees find genuinely difficult because intent is hard to read.

Broadcasters and clip culture shape the aftermath. A single angle at normal speed and the same angle in slow motion frequently produce opposite intuitions about force, which is one reason online consensus rarely forms.

Where informed people disagree

The first fault line is about expected value. One school holds that low-percentage skill moves are inefficient: they surrender possession more often than they create advantage, and the advantage they create is usually available through simpler means. The opposing view is that unpredictability has a suppressive effect across a match — a defender who has seen one flick attempt defends the next one-versus-one differently — and that this effect is real but not capturable in per-action success rates.

The second is about defensive responsibility. Some coaches argue that a defender beaten by a flourish should accept it and recover position, because the recovery challenge is where cards and penalties come from. Others argue that permitting an uncontested skill move teaches an opponent that the duel is free, and that contesting — legally — is a duty rather than an indulgence.

The third is about officiating consistency. There is a persistent view that spectacular actions attract protective officiating, and an equally persistent counter-view that they attract sceptical officiating because the attacker is seen to have engineered the contact. Neither is easy to demonstrate, and both are asserted more often than they are evidenced.

The practical implications for coaching

Most senior coaching staffs handle this through zone-based permissions rather than blanket rules. Skill moves are encouraged in the final third and in wide areas where a lost ball leaves the defensive structure intact, and discouraged in the middle third where a turnover puts opponents into space behind the midfield line. This is taught as a decision rule, not a technique restriction: the move is fine, the location is what is being coached.

On the defensive side, the relevant training theme is deceleration and body shape rather than the tackle itself. A defender who arrives at the landing zone under control has options; a defender arriving at full speed has only one, and it is the one that produces a foul. Sessions that place defenders in recovery scenarios — deliberately beaten, then asked to re-engage — target exactly this.

Set-piece and transition coaches also flag the second-phase risk. A failed flick in build-up does not simply return the ball; it returns it with the attacking team's players facing the wrong way, which is the most valuable form of turnover for a counter-attacking side.

What to watch next

Watch how defensive units respond structurally rather than individually. If a team's cover defender consistently drops rather than steps when a flick is attempted, that is a coached instruction. Watch whether the ball is being flicked into space or into a second defender — the second case usually indicates the move was executed against a set defence rather than against an isolated one.

Watch also for the officiating pattern around aerial-and-recovery duels. Refereeing bodies periodically issue guidance on categories of challenge they want handled more consistently, and the recovery tackle after a beaten first contact is a plausible candidate. Whether such guidance appears, and in what terms, is not currently known.

Frequently asked questions

Is the rainbow flick against the rules?

No. The Laws of the Game contain no list of permitted or prohibited skill moves, and flicking the ball over an opponent's head is not an offence. The only relevant restriction is the general prohibition on playing in a dangerous manner, which applies when an action threatens injury regardless of what technique produced it. In practice that provision is rarely engaged by the flick itself.

Can a defender be penalised just for tackling after a skill move?

No. The challenge is assessed on its own terms — whether it was careless, reckless, or used excessive force — and the skill that preceded it does not change the standard. A clean, controlled tackle remains legal no matter how elaborate the attacking move was. Equally, winning the ball does not automatically make a challenge fair if the manner of the challenge was reckless.

Why do coaches discourage skill moves in central areas?

Because of what a turnover costs there. A ball lost in a wide area leaves the defensive shape largely intact and the touchline limits the opponent's options. A ball lost centrally, with players facing the wrong way, gives the opposition a direct route towards goal against an unset defence. The move is not the objection; the location and the recovery cost are.

What should a defender do when a flick is attempted?

Standard coaching is to stay side-on, delay rather than commit, and aim to arrive at the ball's landing point under control. Lunging is discouraged because a beaten lunge removes the defender from the play entirely and, if contact occurs, is the version most likely to be judged reckless. Controlling the approach preserves the option of a clean challenge or a simple containment.

Does slow-motion replay change how a challenge looks?

It can. Slow motion extends the apparent duration of contact and makes force look more deliberate, which is why officiating guidance in several competitions has emphasised judging speed and intensity at normal pace. Reviewers are generally encouraged to use slow motion for point of contact and normal speed for force. Whether that guidance is applied uniformly is a matter of ongoing debate.

Is there a tactical benefit to attempting skill moves that often fail?

Arguably, though it is hard to measure. The claim is that unpredictability changes how defenders engage in later duels — hesitating, dropping off, or refusing to commit — which creates value that does not show up in the success rate of any single attempt. Critics respond that this deterrent effect is asserted rather than demonstrated, and that the immediate turnover cost is concrete.

Sources and further reading

• International Football Association Board — the published Laws of the Game, particularly the sections on fouls and misconduct and on playing in a dangerous manner.
• UEFA and national federation refereeing departments — periodic guidance documents on challenge assessment and the use of replay speed in review processes.
• Coaching literature from national football associations — published curricula on one-versus-one defending, jockeying and recovery-run technique.
• Football analytics publications — discussion of possession value models and how turnovers in different pitch zones are weighted.