soccer can be dangerous

I was reading an article that was very interesting to me, because I like to play soccer, and is my main sport, and the article talk about the problems involving heading the ball.

Heading is believed to have killed the English footballer Jeff Astle. Astle, 59, who died in 2002, developed cognitive problems after years of playing for England and West Bromwich Albion. The coroner ruled that his death resulted from a degenerative brain disease caused by heading heavy leather footballs.

The damage only occurred in players who said they headed the ball at least 1,000 times in a year, that is an averaged.

I think that brain damage its very odd in this sport, not like boxing that almost every boxer ends up whit brain damage after he retires, this has to be taken like a warning to the players, but not as a reason to quit playing.

I would recommend further studies to confirm what is a safe amount so that footballers could be advised on this.

Dr Andrew Rutherford from the School of Psychology at Keele University has been researching the possible damage caused by heading for several years. He says he is yet to be convinced by the evidence so far.

He suspects that researchers are looking at the wrong thing. He believes most head trauma seen in football is due to players clashing heads when they are going for a header, rather than contact with the ball itself.

I think that this should no be a problem for the players, but they can change some things of the game, like the ball, make it different and more light.