Scottish study links dementia in footballers to heading the ball
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The risk of dementia means football authorities must ask whether players should be allowed to head the ball, according to the lead author of a study that has found a link between the activity and neurodegenerative disease.
The study will increase pressure for radical changes in a sport where players challenge for the ball with their heads to score goals and make blocks, amid wider scrutiny of how sports, including rugby and boxing, deal with head injuries.
The research, led by the University of Glasgow, found that goalkeepers, who rarely head the ball and are the only players allowed to use their hands, were at similar risk to the general population. But outfield players were almost four times as likely to develop neurodegenerative disease, which often leads to premature death. The risk was highest for defenders, at about fivefold higher.
The risk of neurodegenerative disease is also tied to career length. The risk roughly doubled for players with the greatest longevity when compared against those with the shortest careers, to about a fivefold increase.
“Is heading really necessary for football?” Professor Willie Stewart, honorary professor at Glasgow university and leader of the study, told the Financial Times. “After all, it’s called football, not headball.”
High-profile former players, including Sir Bobby Charlton and other members of England’s 1966 World Cup-winning team, have been diagnosed with dementia, drawing attention to the risks of playing football.
The game’s authorities have introduced some guidance on reducing the risks but campaigners have accused them of making slow work of addressing the issue, while Stewart said global action was required.
“Football has to ask the difficult questions: Is heading a football absolutely necessary to the game of football? Is potential exposure to dementia [and] degenerative brain disease absolutely necessary? Or can some other form of the game be considered?”
Fifa, world football’s governing body, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last month, the English Football Association, the governing body in England; the English Premier League and the English Football League, which run the top four divisions; and associations for players and managers agreed new guidance for so-called “higher force” headers, with up to 10 a week to be practised in training across the professional and grassroots game.
However, Stewart told the FT any number of limits on exposure were “purely scientific guesswork”.
The findings, which were published in the JAMA Neurology medical journal, examined health data from roughly 8,000 Scottish former footballers and 23,000 people from the general public as a control group. The FA is among the financial backers of the overarching Field study, Football’s InfluencE on Lifelong health and Dementia risk.
Charlotte Cowie, chief medical officer at the FA, welcomed the findings and said the Field study had enabled the governing body to make changes in the game.
The risks did not change depending on the era in which footballers played, ranging from the 1930s to the late 1990s. However, balls have become faster and lighter over time, as technology developed away from the thick leather spheres that would become heavy with moisture during games.
Stewart said that protective headgear was not the answer to dealing with the risks of heading because it tended to take away the sensation of pain, making athletes “more inclined to put their heads in the wrong place”.
The latest results come two years after earlier Field research found that professional footballers were 3.5 times more likely to die as a result of neurodegenerative disease than members of the public. Stewart said the latest research showed that head injury and the impact of heading the ball were the “missing link” between sport and dementia.