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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I've always suspected that to be true, even as a kid. I wonder about the soccer players "heading" the ball. No thanks.

IFAB doesn’t directly restrict heading, but permits each national FA to place their own restrictions at the grassroots level.

The US adopted restrictions 10 years ago. No heading at all for age 10 and under (indirect free kick to the opponent for violations). Under 13 years old coaches are required to keep track of heading and limit any individual player to fewer than 25 per week total between training and matches.

The English FA also has adopted rules limiting heading for youth. I image most of Europe has as well.

That's good progress. But I don't see any reason to believe that heading is dangerous for kids but safe for older people.

smoking's not more dangerous for kids either, that's not why there's age restrictions on cigarettes

Older people are better-able to decide if the risk is acceptable. Personally I'd like to see heading limited to over-16s.

The ball for soccer/association football is fairly pliable and headers are not that common. You also don't see players obviously dazed or knocked out after heading the ball. I have to think the damage from soccer headers, if any, is orders of magnitude below that of American Football.

I didn't spend much time researching but here is one article backing up my assertion: https://www.orthocarolina.com/blog/heading-the-ball-in-socce...

Edit: I am happy to see good research supported that headers can cause damage. However, please note that I am suggesting headers in Association Football are much less damaging compared with American Football, as a opposed to a complete avoidance of damage.

And here's one article saying the opposite:

https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/heading-soccer-ball-do...

Even if headers themselves are safe for brains (and there is some evidence they're not), going for one puts you at increased risk for an unpadded, head-to-head collision with your opponent. That kind of thing we do know is bad for brain health.

Matters of health are probably the wrong ones to speculate on or try to speak authoritatively about when you "didn't spend much time researching" them. CTE can be a problem in soccer specifically because "Evidence indicates that repetitive concussive and subconcussive blows to the head cause CTE"[emphasis mine][1]. You don't need to be "dazed or knocked out" to cause damage. Suggesting otherwise is dangerous.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...

There's plenty of recent news coverage linking soccer players and dementia. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/mar/16/footballers...

The thresholds for brain damage keep getting revised downwards.

"60 Minutes" recently ran a segment where soldiers experiencing a lot of gunshot sounds get brain damage, too. The result is soldier training is now done with rounds that are much quieter.

P.S. as a kid, I was a miserable failure at baseball. The reason was I did not want to get smacked in the head with a hardball. I avoided the ball. That didn't please the coach at all.

Less damaging. But still damaging. Compare smoking a cigarette a day to a pack. Clearly less is more healthy, but still not healthy and probably should mostly be avoided all together.

I'm guessing this is actually looking at the wrong thing. If you've ever headed a ball in practice, you don't think it's dangerous to head the ball. If you do it right, it barely feels like anything.

But if you are trying to maneuver your head to a position where you can head the ball, you sometimes find the danger is actually other people's heads. If you've ever knocked heads with someone, you might suspect it is not healthy.

> You also don't see players obviously dazed or knocked out after heading the ball.

That depends a lot on the relative speed, and some kids can kick the ball pretty damn hard. I had an incident where I headed the ball, and had no other memory formed for the rest of that day. I don't recall the rest of the match, the final score, or how I got home.

The current guidance is no/limited heading for youth soccer players. [1]

Futsal, a small-sided variant of soccer, has way less heading because of the type of ball and how the game is played. It also teaches excellent technical skills, so it's great for kids who want to play regular soccer later on. [2] If as a society we continue the trend towards less and less acceptability of brain injury risk in sports, then futsal may well become the more-popular form of soccer.

1. https://usclubsoccer.org/headinjuries/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futsal

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