 |
| Picture Alliance |
A British study of ex-professional footballers suggests there's a link between frequent headers and cognitive disorders. Some countries have banned headers for kids. The DFB are taking a different approach.
The more often a footballer plays, the higher the risk of cognitive disorders. That is the conclusion of a study that has been published in Great Britain. Cognitive disorders include increasing forgetfulness, reduced attention, concentration problems, speech disorders, orientation problems or memory loss.
For the study, which was commissioned by the English Football Association (FA), the researchers analyzed the questionnaires of 468 former British professional footballers over the age of 45. On average, the footballers were around 63 years old. They had to estimate whether they had headed the ball, on a per game or training session basis, between zero and five time, six to 15 time or more than 15 times. Their cognitive abilities were then tested in telephone interviews.
The result was that players with the highest frequency of headers had more than three times the risk of cognitive impairment compared to those in the lowest category.
