British youth players banned from headers in practice

British youth soccer players will no longer learn to head the ball before age 11, according to new safety guidelines announced by sport officials this week aimed to cut down on exposure to the potentially harmful play.

Children in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland will not begin instruction on headers until they leave primary school, and even then, “it will remain a low priority when compared to other technical aspects of the game,” state the guidelines, published concurrently by the Football Associations of the three countries. Wales did not adopt the rules.

The changes, which take immediate effect, are one of the first reactions to a 2019 study from the University of Glasgow on the incidence of degenerative brain disease in former professional players. The research found ex-pro players were about 3.5 times more likely to die of dementia compared with a control sample, and five times more likely to die of Parkinson’s. The former soccer players were less likely to die of heart disease and some cancers, researchers found.

The policy changes touch every age group of youth soccer in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Primary schoolchildren are not to head the ball outside of matches, where headers are already rare. Players beginning in under-12 age groups can begin practicing headers once a month with a maximum of five attempts, although the “expectation is that heading should not be introduced at this stage.”