You have to take some things in life in small portions. Too much of a certain thing can lead to harm, whether it’s addictive substances like sugar or caffeine, staring at screens for a long time or even at work: sometimes something you love can be dangerous. And yes, it also connects to football.
In recent years we see more and more former players, such as Jack Charlton or Gerd Muller, who die at an early age after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. Various studies in the UK have found a direct link between football and dementia and other brain diseases, following the damage the brain suffers from multiple hits to the ball. Recently, the tragic story of Philip Adams, a former football player who slaughtered 6 people and shot himself, surfaced in the United States. In the post-mortem it was discovered that he suffered from a brain disease, which is affected by repeated head injuries.
True, soccer is not football, but the brain damage as a result of hits is also significant. The repeated impact of the ball on the skull affects the brain and has led to a high incidence of the same diseases in players, who although retire from the industry at the age of 35-40, but face the damage it left in their bodies years later (and at the same time enjoy the huge profits that the industry achieved for them).
A huge study done in England between 1930 and 1990 proved this. The frequency of forgetfulness in field players was four times higher than in the rest of the population, while in defense players the frequency was five times higher. This is especially noticeable in English football, in the shadow of the stereotype about the elevations, which accompanied the kingdom for decades. Most of the players from Burnley who won the championship in 1959/60 were diagnosed with dementia, while there were also several cases among the football winning team of 1966.
This debate has been going on for years, and recently we’ve seen different countries start to take action on the issue. In the United States, children aged 10 and under have been banned from hitting in practice since 2015, while in the same England, children aged 11 and under have been banned from hitting. At the same time, the English Football Association requires teams to limit players to ten “high tackles” per week during training.
Those high strikes, according to the definition of the English association, are strikes that came from the heights or from particularly long passes, and not those intended to keep balls away. It is not clear how they manage to enforce this restriction, if at all, and we still see quite a few strikes in the English league. But the precedential step is important: this is the first time that a major soccer country, England, has taken a preventive step against head injuries.
Too many footballers have died young. The Hungarian Ferenc Puskas or the Argentinian Jose Luis Braun also passed away at an early stage with brain diseases, and there are countless other cases of lower profile players. Perhaps in the future we will see more great players, even from the modern era, dealing with such and other brain diseases. In the years when players train more frequently and from a younger age, the situation is worrying.
On the other hand, maybe today the situation is less bad. Anyone who has ever been hit in the face by a Mikasa bullet knows how much this bullet hurts, much more than modern bullets, which have air pads. Along with awareness and progress in brain research, it is possible that nowadays the damage is less severe.
Strikes have been a part of football for years. Some of the biggest goals the industry has seen have been scored on strikes, and being able to get to the ball first is perhaps the most important thing in the game. It is hard to imagine football where hitting is not allowed, and it is also hard to see how such a ban can be enforced. All the footballers who play today have been striking for years, and for a large part of them it is very significant in the game.
The problem is that we don’t have clear evidence of direct damage from the hits, although two different large studies have seen that there are more cases of Alzheimer’s in football players, and it is possible that this is influenced by other things or genetic components, rather than the hits themselves.
The existing research on the subject was enough to make the various football bodies think about the subject in depth, but it is not certain that it reflects enough to lead to a complete ban on strikes.
The American football league, the NFL, faces a similar situation. The sport is of course more physical than football and is very different, where the players do not hit the ball but collide with each other. They do play with helmets, but it has been found that the vast majority of football players face some stage of brain disease in their careers following the significant head injuries.
The commissioner of the league, Roger Goodell, was even summoned to a congressional hearing on the subject. The league is trying to introduce better helmets and its own technology to try to prevent the brain damage early, with controversial success, but no one is thinking of stopping the NFL because of the brain damage.
In football it is different. The strikes are a small part of the industry, and not something inseparable like the contact that exists in football. The brain damage probably happens because of direct encounters with the ball and no one suggests the players run from square to square with helmets. In theory, you can imagine football without contact. This is already happening in children’s ages in England and the United States, at a stage when the head is more vulnerable. There were all kinds of other proposals, for example allowing teams to hit only inside the box, but it is not certain that this is the only reflective solution.
Some will say that this is a professional risk – there are quite a few jobs, especially the physical ones, that involve health damage of one kind or another. We are past the era when kids went to the coal mines every day, and top footballers get paid millions to put a ball into a goal.
If football is entertainment, you can say that the strikes are part of that entertainment, the show of football. The debate about the beauty of the game without hitting is subjective, and I personally don’t think the brain damage to the players is worth it. Many others would disagree.
On the same subject, it is interesting to imagine a world without strikes. The best footballers who excel in the air are also good on the grass – players like Virgil van Dijk or Erling Holland will still be the best in the world, even if they can’t shoot. Other players, such as Nathaniel Phillips from Liverpool for example, will not be able to stay in teams from the first leagues in the world without strikes.
The game, quite simply, will change from end to end. Already one of the most efficient ways to score is in stationary situations, and the great work of Guy Weisinger at Maccabi Haifa in this regard influenced their winning the championship last year, and it is ultimately connected to strikes. It is much more difficult to score from corners when hitting is prohibited, and the relative height advantage will disappear. Maybe this will allow a team like Israel to pass much higher countries, like Scotland or the Czech Republic.
In the end, the situation is complex. There are too many alarming signs of a link between football and brain disease and if footballers can be spared years of dealing with Alzheimer’s or other diseases after retirement then it should be done. In any case, it is very difficult to imagine the branch as long as it remains only on the ground. The first steps of the English association show that we are on the way to a serious discussion on the subject, and perhaps to restrictions that will change the game in an unprecedented way.
