England World Cup winning midfielder Sir Bobby Charlton has been diagnosed with dementia at the age of 83.  This sad news comes after the sad passing of his older brother Jack Charlton in July of this year and the death of England world cup winning midfielder Nobby Stiles on Friday. Both of whom had previously been diagnosed with dementia.

The fact that all three people mentioned above have previously been diagnosed with dementia shows a worrying trend and has led to some serious discussions about whether their dementia has been caused by heading the ball.

This has led to some high profile discussion on social media with former players such as Gary Lineker tweeting “Yet another of our 1966 World Cup winning squad has been diagnosed with dementia. Perhaps the greatest of them all, @SirBobby. This is both very sad and deeply concerning.”

There has been plenty of talk and research discussing whether heading the football could lead to problems in later life. A study by the University of Glasgow in 2019 found out that former professional footballers are three and a half times more likely to die from heading a ball than the average person. However, the same study found that there is no definitive evidence that heading a ball causes dementia. (BBC Sport, 2020).

This is an obvious worry and this from the official Alzheimer’s society website adds greater concern “A small study in early 2017 was among the first to show a greater risk of dementia in professional footballers. Researchers studied the brains of former footballers with memory problems. They found that most had signs of a form of dementia called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and all had signs of Alzheimer’s disease.” This led to football legend Alan Shearer taking part in a documentary in 2017 called ‘Dementia, football and me’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMoDtIJ_b8I

As the Glasgow University study states, there’s no definitive link that heading a ball causes dementia, but these recent diagnoses to football legends like Bobby Charlton are a huge cause for concern and it’s clear that this is an area that needs further discussion and further research.