– With all the concern about potential brain injury and sport team liability, it seems like soccer/football ‘headers’ would concern people more. Why isn’t this practice frowned upon at a professional level?
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Like other sports, soccer has started to take head injuries more seriously in the last 5-10years. Potential head injuries now require an immediate stop in play, rather than waiting for the ball to go out of play. There has also been discussion of allowing teams to have a temporary substitution to evaluate for concussion — the concern being that have to play with 10 players discourages a thorough process.
However, soccer, like other sports, has focused on more severe injuries, where I think the evidence is pretty clear that the risk is in repeated minor injuries as much as the big concussions from things like clashes of heads. Generally, sports don’t want to change, and there just isn’t enough push to take the repeated impacts seriously because the harm isn’t as obvious as the result of concussions. The only major changed I’ve heard suggested is to not have kids below a certain age head the ball to avoid injuries while their brains are still developing.
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