Football coaches in the kingdom have acknowledged the furore concerning children heading the ball … but believe that its hazards are negligible as the beautiful game they teach should be played on the floor.
The Football Association, the sport’s governing body in the United Kingdom, last week published new guidelines which explicitly states that children aged 11 and under will no longer be taught to head the ball during training in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The new rules for coaches also puts limits on how much heading older children should do and it follows Glasgow University research that showed former footballers were three-and-a-half times more likely to die from brain disease and five times more likely to die from Parkinson’s disease.
Despite the seriousness of the medical risks and the English FA’s move to combat it, the same guidelines haven’t yet spread globally.
John McKenzie, Juventus Academy Bahrain director, said:
“This is an advisory from the English FA. I have asked its Italian counterpart and Juventus for their own guidelines, but I haven’t received anything back yet.
“Regardless, we don’t teach heading much because of the way we play football. We play on the floor and focus on skills. There is definitely an element of football culture involved … the English game can at times be somewhat ‘ugly’ for want of a better word. There’s certainly a higher frequency of ‘hoofing it long’ which in turn leads to players attacking or defending the ball with their head as it comes down.
“That’s certainly not the Italian way!"
The controversy has come to light following the plight of former England and West Bromwich Albion centre forward Jeff Astle, who died in 2002 aged 59 after being diagnosed with early onset dementia.
A re-examination of his brain in 2014 found he had died from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain condition normally associated with boxing which has been linked to memory loss, depression and dementia.
A coroner ruled that the late star's brain had been damaged by years of heading heavy leather footballs.
His daughter, Dawn, has long campaigned to raise awareness and protect children from one day suffering similar ailments. She welcomed the news, telling one national news agency that the new UK guidelines were 'a really sensible way to make the game we all love safer'.
Paul Shipwright, who founded Tekkers Academy in Bahrain with his wife Deena, a Bahrain international midfielder, has long been aware of the medical advice and has tailored their growing soccer school to focus solely on keeping the ball on the ground.
He said:
“I think clearly we’ve been aware of it for a long time; being English we’ve seen the many statements from Jeff Astle’s family who worked tirelessly to bring this to public attention.
“Frankly, we don’t do any heading drills whatsoever at Tekkers and never have. It is still part of the game and in matches the children will head the ball, but it’s not something we’ll specifically focus on in their training sessions.
“One of our key philosophies is that football should be played on the floor and youngsters can learn heading at a later stage when their bodies are more developed for it.”
