Expert hits out at sport’s bosses as major new research shows terrifying connection to disease

She said: “He was so young when he died. His brain was really scary. You could see tremendous atrophy of his frontal lobes.

“It’s just unbelievable that a young person could have such dramatic damage so there was no doubt in our mind that he had CTE – and he’d only played soccer.

“At death, he clearly had CTE. It affected his brain in a very substantial way.”

Dr McKee expected immediate action from football bodies such as FIFA after her discoveries but was shocked by their reaction.

She said: “I met with FIFA in Zurich at a concussion conference. I am very unpopular there. They just have a very low opinion of my work and they told me that it was very poor science.

“You would think they would be concerned about the players that made them wealthy. Apparently not. I really do think it’s denial and deflection.

“They are not taking care of the players that made them such a big deal in the first place. They should be funding this research.

“ALS can be caused by contact sport. FIFA are hoping this will go away but it won’t.

“Patrick Grange headed the ball constantly and was 29 when he died. He had terrible CTE.

“The evidence is mounting for this connection with contact sport and CTE. ALS, dementia and Parkinson’s are all linked.

“It was so controversial when we started making this link. I got so much heat but we just need one more paper to really put this in the bag.”

CTE is also known as boxer’s brain because it is most commonly linked to fighters who had taken regular blows to the head.

In 2002, neuropathologist Dr Bennet Omalu also linked the condition to other contact sports after studying the brain of American football hero Mike Webster, who died aged 50 after suffering from dementia.

The findings triggered a $1billion (£ 740million) lawsuit payout from governing body the NFL.

Dr Omalu’s discovery inspired Will Smith’s 2015 movie Concussion.

In A Blow to the Header, Dr Omalu says: “Heading is an intentional exposure to a blow to the head. Look at the ball coming at you at velocity.

“It downloads energy to your head and because your brain moves like a balloon inside your skull, it begins to bump around and you suf fer sub-concussive blows.

“There is no such thing as a safe blow to the human head.

“All types of blows or impacts to the human head have the potential to cause brain damage.

“You begin to manifest symptoms including mood disorders, cognitive problems and eventually it becomes a full-blown dementia.

“Some of us would develop motor symptoms that would resemble ALS.”

Chris Nowinski, founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, agreed.

He said: “There are parallels with soccer and what happened with (American) football.

“You look at this game and now there are 10 CTE cases and you think, ‘How has this happened? What are the activities involved in soccer that are potentially causing head trauma?’

“People are so worried about the legal ramifications that no one’s going to admit it until we force them to.

“This is a threat to profits for sports. The best example is that the NFL has had to settle what will be a larger than $1billion settlement that is uncapped for former players because of how many of them are developing CTE.

“The sports that can keep the spotlight off them the longest with regard to this issue are the ones who will attract the most children.

“I worry that part of the reason why we’re not owning up to the problem in soccer is because they want the sport to succeed potentially more than they want the players to succeed.”

Patrick’s heartbroken family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, believe football cost him his life.

Mum Michele said: “Patrick’s first word was ‘ ball’. He was never without a ball. He was heading the ball from very young. Soccer became his passion.

“I guess we need to say we were naïve because we didn’t know much about head bangs and head trauma.

“He was knocked out once and had 17 stitches above the eye. We were like, ‘Oh, he was playing his hardest. He was doing his best.’

“We were proud that he’d played that hard even though he had that injury.

“We would’ve done things a little differently. We wouldn’t have had him doing repeated headers.

“But we couldn’t take soccer away – that was who he was.”

Patrick was diagnosed with MND two weeks after his 28th birthday in 2010. He died 17 months later.

His dad Mike said: “I think about him every day. It rips my heart out.”

Before he succumbed to MND, Patrick insisted: “Even after I’m gone, I want to make a difference.”

Dr Willie Stewart, a neuropathologist at Glasgow University, said that more evidence is needed to establish a link between headers and MND.

He said: “It’s really interesting and it’s worth looking into the research they’ve done but you can’t draw any conclusions from it at all.

“I think Dr McKee is doing fine work but it is a single case. There is not yet enough data for me to form an opinion.

“We need to look at large numbers and get a picture across the nation and that’s not been done.

“I don’t think there’s enough data to be confident of anything.”