CTE subject even in Soccer!!!

The thing that I've read is that while the ball doesn't weigh much, most kids' necks aren't necessarily strong enough to keep their heads in place upon contact with a fast-moving ball. Their head gets rattled even though the 'collision' doesn't seem to be much.

I'm based in the UK, have played lot of soccer and also coached at youth level. Even 10 years ago, was pretty aware that teaching the young kids to head the ball was fraught with problems. In games it couldn't be avoided (wasn't banned even at under 8s and don't think this has changed ) but used to teach them with a foam ball. I know that some pros from the 1950s have had similar problems such as memory issues & suspected CTE but that was back when the ball would suck up moisture and was like heading a rock. When I played in my teens (soccer in the winter, football in the summer in the UK) the balls were much lighter but still heavier than today but if you played a team that played "route1" and just played it long all the time you could find yourself heading the ball 20 or 30 times in a game. Some positions will go games without heading the ball but centre forwards and centre backs will always be involved in an ariel battle at some point.

I don't know about you guys...but since I'm from Brazil I have played soccer before i could walk. Never heard anything about it before this CTE stuff exploded. Never saw any friend of mine or people that I know of, even the ones who got to be pros, had anything that could be related to this.

I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't care about children, and of course I wouldn't toss a professional football into the head of a 2 years old, but again, the article was about not letting any children head balls, not even for simple recreation.

This is not new and also is in no way surprising, and it is arguably an even more obvious threat to youth player safety than a lot of football collisions. Yes, the ball weighs approx 1 lb, but as we all learned in elementary school science, force = mass x velocity (plus factoring in the velocity of the player's head/body moving towards the ball).

I understand the frustration, but the bottom line is : Things hitting the head are bad.  Things causing the brain to rattle around in the skull are bad.

One of the original studies on CTE was performed on Italian soccer players, who had a significant greater risk of traumatic brain injury than the general population.

I didn't notice that before, but in actuality, and I'm no physics professor, but wouldn't the measurement we want be kinetic energy (KE)? The formula for KE effectively determines the force w/ which something can be struck, at least in this example. So, KE = ½mv^2

Force measures a change in momentum, so even measuring the effect of the hit as momentum times velocity (n = mv) should work, no?

Uhh..guys

They'll use their head almost as a one-timer in hockey. See a guy taking a good shot and head it cross-goal to confuse the keeper.