British soccer union wants fewer headers for pros, and none for kids, to protect players’ brains
BOSTON– The union representing British football players will announce the first comprehensive prevention protocol for the brain disease CTE on Tuesday, broadening heightened concern about concussions to damage that can be caused by less forceful blows to the head.
Guidelines from the Professional Footballers’ Association, which represents current and former players in the Premier League, FA Women’s Super League and English football leagues, recommend no more than 10 heads per week – including training – for professionals. Children under 12 should not head the ball at all, the PFA said, as part of a chronic traumatic encephalopathy prevention protocol designed to reduce impacts to the head throughout a player’s life.
“CTE is preventable. Period,” Dr. Adam White, director of brain health at the PFA, said Monday at the first-ever Global CTE Summit, held in San Francisco as the NFL descended on the Bay Area for Sunday’s Super Bowl.
“It’s the principles of less heading, less force, less often and later in life that matter,” White told the Associated Press. “These could apply to any sport and are the best hope we have of preventing current and future players from meeting the same fate as previous generations.”
Speakers at the summit included researchers, former athletes and legislators; Virtual and in-person audience participants also included family members who have witnessed the dangers of CTE, which can lead to memory loss, depression, violent mood swings, and other cognitive and behavioral problems.
“This may be the most underestimated public health problem in the world today,” said former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. “Preventing CTE requires courage: the courage to change tradition, the courage to confront denial, and the courage to put long-term health ahead of short-term gains. »
The degenerative brain disease, now known as CTE, was studied in boxers more than a century ago as punch drunk syndrome and first diagnosed in American football players in 2005. It has since become a concern in ice hockey, soccer and other contact sports, as well as among combat veterans and others who sustain repeated blows to the head.
A 2017 study found CTE in 110 of 111 brains donated by former NFL players. The disease can only be identified posthumously through a brain examination.
NFL Hall of Famer Warren Sapp, speaking about an hour from Levi’s Stadium on the day of the high-profile opening night of the Super Bowl, said the focus shouldn’t be just on professionals, who are at least paid and able to make informed decisions about the risks of playing a dangerous sport.
“It’s our obligation to the game to improve it,” he said. “It’s how we apply it to our children and what age we give them.”
The NFL, college football and many other sports have instituted protocols that guide teams and athletes when returning to play after suffering a possible concussion.
But the British soccer protocol, a copy of which was obtained by the AP, is the first comprehensive plan to combat CTE by addressing the less dramatic subconcussive hits that can be common in practice, according to Chris Nowinski, founder of the Concussion and CTE Foundation.
“For contact sports, CTE prevention protocols are just as important, if not more so, than concussion protocols,” he said.
Among the most recent concerns are routine head hits suffered by soccer players and those by soccer players who head the ball. Research funded by the union and the Football Association found that Scottish professionals face a 3.5 times higher risk of dementia than the general population; studies of the brains of British football players found that the majority suffered from CTE, including Jeff Astle, Gordon McQueen and Chris Nicholl.
“With what we know today about the disease, it would be a failure for our players to do nothing,” White said in a statement. “The science and the solutions are clear, it just takes the willingness of sporting bodies to prioritize the long-term health of athletes and I am pleased that we have been able to do this in England. I encourage all sports to put as much, if not more, effort into CTE prevention protocols as they do concussion protocols.”
The protocol also includes annual education, research support and care for former players who suspect they are living with CTE. It follows the release of a CTE prevention framework released in 2023 by researchers brought together by the Concussion and CTE Foundation and the CTE Center at Boston University.
Nowinski called on sports leagues and their medical advisors to adopt CTE prevention protocols.
“There is now overwhelming evidence that more head impacts in sports will result in more athletes with CTE,” Nowinski said. “Sports administrators are not at risk of CTE themselves, but the policies they put in place condemn some athletes to living with CTE, a burden that will be borne primarily by their spouses and children. Enough is enough.”
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AP Sports: https://apnews.com/sports
