Heading a soccer ball could kill you
Why a US women’s soccer star is donating her brain to science to raise awareness about brain damage
Until recently, former US women’s soccer player Brandi Chastain was best known for her shirtless victory slide following a World Cup final win against China in 1999. Now she’s back in the news for her decision to donate her brain posthumously to researchers studying concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at Boston University.
Since the early 1980s, some researchers have argued that CTE, a degenerative brain disease, is caused by subconcussive hits to the head in sports like boxing and football. Soccer, the world’s most widely played team sport, has long been considered safer. But by the early 2000s, doctors began suspecting that “headers” in soccer may be a main source of CTE.
Chastain has been campaigning against allowing players younger than 14 to head the ball since 2014. Considering that only about 1% of the players will play professionally, she argues, the risk is too high.
We don’t know when heading the ball became part of the “beautiful game,” but the diving header, arguably the sport’s most dramatic move, was invented by Pablo Bartolucci in Argentina in 1920s. For many players, scoring a goal with a header is a major achievement. That may change now that heading has come under scrutiny.
CTE can only be diagnosed with a posthumous brain exam. That’s one of the reasons it took two decades to connect the condition with soccer players. But since the CTE-related death of Patrick Grange, a 29-year-old soccer player and prolific header, in 2014, the connection has been established and now the campaign to prohibit heading is gaining steam. Last year, the United States Soccer Federation banned players younger than 10 from heading the ball and limited the number of headers players under 14 could execute during practice.
To understand CTE, researchers at Boston University have examined 307 brains, mostly belonging to athletes. Only seven of them were women’s brains. Chastain was unhappy with that number, claiming that all female soccer players, from young kids to professionals, “give as much as the guys” and are as prone to CTE. Many female players “are doing it for nothing [financially]”.
Chastain’s donation may not be made in actuality for years, but it’s an important symbolic gesture that the former star hopes will further the conversation about safety in soccer.
