According to Fifa, football does not pose any risk to the brain of the players, contrary to what science shows.
Professional football, generator of brain disorders? Fifa does not believe it. The international organization has reacted to the recently published study, which highlights an increased risk of dementia among professional players. The work is based on the autopsy of the brains of six former incumbents and on the clinical records of 13 other players hospitalized for dementia.
Four of the six brains dissected showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a pathology characteristic of sports where the cranium can suffer violent blows (boxing, American football, etc.). In this work, the authors evoke a “potential link” between football and the emergence of cerebral pathologies, associated with the repetition of the impact induced by the “heads”.
“No proof”
Fifa is doubtful. In a statement, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) said that there was “no evidence of negative effects following head butts or various shocks”, and that “investigations carried out on players in activity or retirees, concerning a possible impact on brain functions, have not produced convincing results ”.
The Federation wants to be even more reassuring. “Fortunately, football is not one of the high risk sports for brain or head injuries,” she writes. A position which therefore contrasts with the results of the aforementioned study and which may surprise, on the part of an organization more renowned for its sports analysis than for its scientific expertise.
Cognitive alterations
Indeed, if there is no question of making football an extreme sport with high dangerousness, it would be advisable not to sweep the results of work carried out by teams of specialized researchers, according to a completely satisfactory methodology. Especially since this is not the first time that a study evokes a possible risk for the brain health of footballers.
In October 2016, work carried out on amateur footballers showed that repeated heads during training impaired cognitive faculties. The effect was ephemeral and the group studied, quite small (19 players), but the results were no less eloquent. In the United States, the technique has been banned since March 2015 from training for children under ten years old.
While around the world, 250 million people play football, the authors of this work deemed it necessary to raise awareness in the community. They called for “new approaches to detect, monitor and prevent brain damage in the sport” to “safeguard the long-term health of football players at all levels”. No offense to Fifa …
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