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Brain injury in football (soccer) players - an analysis and preventive measures

Arihant Hemendra

    Association football or soccer is hands down the most popular sport in the world, with an estimated 250 million players kicking the football about on some skill level or the other across the world (All You Need to Know About Soccer | World Football FAQ, 2020). The rules of the sport are such that players make contact with not just the ball but also each other using some or the other parts of their bodies. While almost every sport brings about its fair share of related injuries, football sometimes wreaks devastating injuries on its players. This blog post seeks to analyse brain injuries caused by or while playing football.

Of course, with every sport bringing about its fair share of injuries, soccer is no stranger to this. Take, for example, Petr Cech’s horrific skull fracture in 2006, or Iain Hume’s freak injury in 2008 which involved broken pieces of his skull piercing his brain and causing internal bleeding. However new research suggests that much simpler constant impacts such as heading the ball over and over again can also contribute to the onset of brain injuries and related complications. (“Evidence of Brain Damage Found in Former Soccer Players,” 2017, 1) These injuries occur due to repeated blows to the head via heading the ball or similar player actions and run the risk of staying dormant and thus undetected for years, finally issuing only when it is already too late for the player to do anything. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is one such brain injury that shows a clear link between repeated head impacts and its occurence (“Evidence of Brain Damage Found in Former Soccer Players,” 2017, 1).

Does this, however, mean that all of our favourite footballers are going to succumb to some version or other of brain damage, and that those of us who play might be heading down a similar route? There really is no clear cut, short answer to this, so it is both a yes and a no. Firstly, heading a football has a proper technique; which if learnt and implemented properly, greatly minimises the risk of injury to nil or negligible percentage. Heading the ball with the forehead, using one’s core to generate direction on the strike is seen as the proper heading technique as compared to just smacking the football with any part of the head and hoping for the best. Research shows that while regular footballers do show a slightly increased risk of brain injury as compared to control groups, players who describe themselves as good at - or even frequent headers of the ball - paradoxically reported a lower risk of injury than those uncomfortable with the proper technique. This suggests that having and implementing proper heading technique in itself alleviates a sizable amount of risk of injury.  (Sortland & Tysvaer, 1989, 45). 

Evidence suggests that most passes in football which involve or facilitate heading are usually low velocity passes, the possibility of getting brain injury from them is fairly low. However it also acknowledges that since no two passes are the same, a player may inadvertently have to head an extremely fast ball sometime or the other in their career (McCrory, 2003, 352) While research has noted some amount of cognitive impairment in players with repeated collisions with the ball and their heads, there still needs to be more research done to justify the findings. More importantly, researchers may also need to factor in events like head-on collisions with other players, the audience, the pitch or any other objects that might cause brain injury. To counter this from happening, certain governing authorities for football - most notably the British Football Association have drafted and in some places implemented rules to at least limit the amount of head impacts taken by players in matches and training sessions., at least in their formative stages (New Heading Guidance for English Football During 2021-22 Season, 2021, 1).  

Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the risks associated with heading footballs (or footballers, for that matter) as well, whether or not researchers find them significant. Research from Purdue University shows that footballs exposed to damp conditions absorb moisture and surpass weight thresholds, gaining momentum in the air and becoming harmful for players. It is recommended that footballs be kept in dry spaces, inflated to pressures among the lower ranges of the specified psi bracket (Purdue University, 2020, 2). To reduce or avoid player on player/object collisions, researchers suggest using soft headgear . Personally, it is felt that regulating fan atmosphere to be a little less violent at least in professional matches, and changing ground boundary hoardings to be made of softer materials might act as preliminary forms of precaution for players’ brains. While the legendary Dutch footballer Johann Cruyff did say that football is played with the head, It is implied to a fair extent that what he meant was using one’s brain while on and off the field, rather than using it in a literal physical sense, risking damage to oneself and opponents.


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References

All you need to know about soccer | World Football FAQ. (2020, March 18). Bundesliga. Retrieved April 17, 2022, from https://www.bundesliga.com/en/faq/all-you-need-to-know-about-soccer

Evidence of brain damage found in former soccer players. (2017, February 15). Science Daily. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 17, 2022, from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170215131600.htm

McCrory, P. R. (2003). Brain injury and heading in soccer. The British Medical Journal, 327(7411), 351,352. 10.1136/bmj.327.7411.351

New heading guidance for English football during 2021-22 season. (2021, July 28). The FA. Retrieved April 17, 2022, from https://www.thefa.com/news/2021/jul/28/20210728-new-heading-guidance-published

Purdue University. (2020, November 12). Soccer players' head injury risk could be reduced with simple adjustments to the ball.

Sortland, O., & Tysvaer, A. T. (1989). Brain damage in former association football players. An evaluation by cerebral computed tomography. Springer, 31(1), 44-48.



 

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