Heading footballs may cause more damage to brain than previously thought, new research warns

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Heading footballs may cause more damage to the brain than previously thought, warns new research. The US study suggests a link between repeated head impacts and serious neurodegenerative diseases, even when they don’t result in injury at the time.

It comes amid a six-year campaign to ban headers from the game in Scotland due to concerns over the long-term health effects for players. The push has been led by the widow of tragic footballer Frank Kopel, Amanda Kopel, who blames her late husband’s death on heading the ball during his career.

New research carried out at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York used advanced MRI techniques to analyse the effects of head impacts on “microstructure” close to the surface of people’s brains. In particular, it looked at links between repetitive head impacts and a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Study senior author Professor Michael Lipton said: "The potential effects of repeated head impacts in sport are much more extensive than previously known and affect locations similar to where we've seen CTE pathology. This raises concern for delayed adverse effects of head impacts."

While previous studies have identified injuries to the brain's white matter in footballers, Prof Lipton and his colleagues employed a new approach to an advanced brain imaging technique called diffusion MRI. Researchers compared brain MRIs of 352 male and female amateur football players, ranging in age from 18 to 53, to brain MRIs of 77 non-collision sport athletes, such as runners.

Football players who headed the ball at high levels showed "abnormality" of the brain's white matter adjacent to sulci, which are deep grooves in the brain's surface. Prof Lipton explained that abnormalities in that region of the brain are known to occur in very severe traumatic brain injuries.

He says the abnormalities were most prominent in the frontal lobe of the brain, an area most susceptible to damage from trauma and frequently impacted during heading the ball. More repetitive head impacts were also associated with poorer verbal learning and worse cognitive performance.

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Most of the study participants had never sustained a concussion or been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury - suggesting repeated head impacts that don't result in serious injury may still adversely affect the brain. Prof Lipton added: "Characterising the potential risks of repetitive head impacts can facilitate safer sport engagement to maximise benefits while minimising potential harms."

Amanda Kopel has been calling for a ban on ball heading in Scotland since 2018 - and wants to see the practice end globally after the 2030 World Cup. Frank Kopel, who played for Dundee Utd, Man Utd and Blackburn, died aged 65 in 2014 after a battle with vascular dementia.

A previous Glasgow Uni study found ex-footballers were about three-and-a-half times more likely to die of neurodegenerative brain disease. Defenders were five times more likely to have dementia than non-footballers, with experts blaming headers.

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