Heads, you lose

In the recent controversy about heading a football, some argue that a blanket ban should be introduced to lessen the threat of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases in retired players. Once the connection is established scientifically (not just statistically) I think such a ban should be inevitable – however I thought the same about smoking, and here we are, sixty years later…. Heading is a distinct, important, and measurable part of the game – but is it really essential?

Background

Until the last few years, it seemed as though little had changed since George Kay, then LFC’s new manager, described the work of Fred Rogers, one of his defenders. ‘He has one natural quality which is invaluable to a centre half, and that is his ability to head a ball with great strength. [Hence, I guess, Fred’s nickname, “Bullet”.] He usually puts in plenty of heading practice – after all, heading is half the job for a centre half nowadays, isn’t it? – but we have no heading machines or novelties here and all phases of training are done in the normal way.’ Kay introduced head tennis in the 30s as a training exercise.

Newspaper photos from 1937 from Liverpool's training

Modern header training websites claim that the practice is ‘an essential part of soccer training to minimize the chances of heads colliding, a major cause of concussions in soccer’. Heading the ball ‘not only helps you to score goals and defend against them, but also win the ball back and keep possession as well’. (Soccer Coaching Pro.) I will try to show that all those presumed attributes may be incorrect, and also believe that the recommended practice of running towards a high ball coming towards you is a dangerous recipe for increasing the impact on the brain.

Several independent research enquiries have led to the same conclusion. The University of Glasgow report in 2019, for example, found that ‘former football players are three and a half times more likely to die of neurogenerative disease than age-matched members of the public, and were more likely to be prescribed dementia-related medication.’ (The same university issued a report on rugby in 2022 which found a ‘considerably increased risk of motor neurone disease’ and other neurodegenerative conditions and advised the sport to reduce training.)

LFC players who are known to have had these illnesses include Gerry Byrne, Billy Liddell, Terry McDermott, Bob Paisley, Ronnie Moran, Tommy Smith and Ron Yeats, who all suffered worse from having played in the leather ball era. Heading directly onto the laces merely added to the problem. It should be noted that, contrary to popular belief, the prescribed weight of the ball has not changed since 1937 (between 14 and 16 ounces, dry); but on a wet surface, leather balls became heavier by absorption. (Before 1937, the figure was 13 to 15 ounces.)

"The ball had a lace in it and if you headed the lace, you had prints all over your head. Nobody could kick the ball that hard. When you hit it, your toes were sore."

A quote from LFChistory.net's interview with Ron Yeats in 2007.

The Liverpool data

Can we use Liverpool’s history of heading the ball in order to assess the quality, as well as the quantity, of the part it plays in modern football? Below are the results of analysing fifty-five videos of full LFC matches, arranged by decade, with five from before 1980 (whose clarity makes them usable for this purpose), ten from each of the next four decades, and ten from the 2020s. Six full LFCW match have also been included. This form of analysis is both time-consuming and reliant on clear, full match videos available on the internet, but necessary if any estimate of the total impact of heading the ball over time for both genders can be produced.

Accordingly, although a wide range of competitions and outcomes have been included in the stats which follow, from League Cup to Champions League, and against teams from home and three overseas countries, there is an emphasis on cup games, with relatively fewer others being easily available. There are even deficiencies in full match videos – headers when the camera is showing another location, (e.g. replays of recent incidents, or even a verbose commentator), or unclear which of opposing players actually headed the ball. Numbers are therefore minima, rather than exaggerated.

Existing analyses of the issue have been deliberately targeted on the individual player’s efficiency. For example, LFC players specifically highlighted for headed goals scored have been Andy Carroll, Peter Crouch and Joel Matip. OPTA and the Premier League have declined to tell me if headers are included in their passing stats, but I assume that they are not, and of course winning a header is not the same as redirecting the ball where you want it to go.

Seeing heading as potentially causing a medical problem means that all examples should really be included - heading to oneself, to another player (of whichever team), into touch, into goal, purposeful or accidental, which part of the head was hit, putting a deflection on the ball or reversing its direction after a long kick, whether the player was already flagged offside, if it was headed just off the playing pitch, if it was a friendly rather than a competitive match, etc. Brain cells are not interested in whether the ball was headed just before or just after the referee blew the whistle and the player’s intent, as well as accuracy, is medically quite irrelevant.

The more immediate dangers of heading a ball are well illustrated by the game against Arsenal on 26 November 1989, the grudge match after they snatched the league title from us at the end of the previous season. Barry Venison was concussed and hospitalized, and three other players had blood pouring from head wounds on the battlefield. The ball hit O’Leary on the head, and he was stretchered off.

Gary Gillespie and Nigel Spackman (shaking hands with Princess Diana) both had head wounds in the FA Cup final in 1988 

Overall stats for the fifty-five LFC men’s games 1966-2022 are as follows:

* five games only. Note that the number of LFC headers is falling much faster than our percentage inaccuracy.

Some women’s matches have also been watched where available – the only two LFCW full matches in the Championship which seem to be on the internet, four WSL matches (now made available by FA player) and some international matches. To my chauvinist surprise, against Crystal Palace (6/12/20) we headed the ball 89 times (one leading to a clash of heads in the first half) to their 52, but fifteen months later, versus Charlton (2/3/22), in our bid for promotion to the WSL, ‘only’ 52 to their 50. The four WSL games this current season, each against tough opposition, have seen an overall reduction in the number of headers, especially in the second half, to under 40 per game.

As can be seen from the above, their figures are comparable to those of LFC men in the last decade, while those of top women’s teams are now significantly lower.

What we might glean from the data

It might be argued that there is no pattern to headers in a match, as they arise from incidental and accidental events in the interplay of the game. However, there are examples which strongly suggest that there is a connection, albeit tenuous, between heading, style of play, and its intensity.

The average number of men’s LFC headers during the 2020/22 seasons (based on 9 earlier games) fell from 41 per match to 16 during the Community Shield of 2022 as both teams concentrated on a ground passing game with few long balls, especially from the keepers. Did you notice any drop in excitement as a result of there being fewer headers? I didn’t. (Mind you, I’ve been unwilling to verify that figure of 16 because I object to MCFC charging to see the video of a match that was shown free on terrestrial TV. Maybe they’re short of a bob or two.)

In the England - Spain women’s Euros (20/7/22) the England players headed the ball 31 times to Spain’s 11 in the ninety minutes. As Spain became more worried about the outcome during extra time, their style of play changed, their well-drilled ground passing game was adversely affected, and they headed the ball 12 times in thirty minutes. Similarly, the game between England and USA Women (7/10/22) was almost eight minutes old before the first header, and there were under twenty in the first half; the Americans, heading nine times in the second half, put on so much pressure to get an equaliser that England headed 26 times, including 16 misdirected.

In the 1998 Pirelli Cup game, Liverpool headed the ball over twice as many times as Inter Milan, partly because they were playing a different style.

In those games which start fast and furious, rather than cat and mouse, the number of headers is high. Similarly, when desperation is the order of the day towards the end of a match, the number of headers increases on both sides. For example, the 26 Liverpool headers in the first half of the Barcelona match (19/4/01) increased to 44 in the second when we had to withstand a Spanish onslaught. We should not be surprised by the high number of headers during LFC/Everton or MUFC encounters. Equally expected is the smaller number of headers during friendly matches.

The last decade has seen a decline in the number of headers. One cause of this phenomenon is the replacement of the long ball by goalkeepers which used to elicit a headed response in the opponent’s half. This happened in microcosm during the FA Cup final (1988) when our fourteen long balls from Grobbelaar into the Wimbledon half fell to three in the second half, while his short passes from the back rose from 3 to 7. Nowadays, hopefully almost gone is a ritual of the ball at kick-off being sent to a half back, and then hoofed forward, effectively offering a gift to the opposing side who have a better view of its flight.

A fraction under twenty per cent of Liverpool’s goals are scored by headers (Soccerment: top heading players in European football).  That figure is also Alan Shearer’s estimate of his own tally during his career. It is also a very small fraction of the total number of headers concerned, let alone those during training.

The main source of the problem concerning dementia lies in the number of headers during training, not in the matches themselves which form a tiny fraction of the whole. The accuracy stats suggest that the trainers are not doing a very good job, and their time might be better spent teaching players how to avoid heading the ball – control by chest or feet is more efficient to retain possession for both men and women. However, while heading remains a lawful technique within the game, training for it is inevitable.

Male/female differences in the number and consequences of headers during matches are slight, but I am unaware of how much is involved during training. None of the short LFCW training drill videos I’ve watched includes heading the ball, though those videos seem to be more for fans’ interest rather than proper teaching techniques. 

Header accuracy

I now suggest that anyone who, for whatever reason, will not accept the medical evidence against heading a football, might nevertheless be in favour of a ban by taking another look at those accuracy statistics. When you see how often a headed ball fails to reach a player on the same team, the inefficiency of heading is quite startling.

Obviously, some players in a team are more likely, and more skilled, than others to head the ball, but the Premier League reports which provide the number of normal passes during a game, and their accuracy, suggest that any player who averages more than 20 passes in games can be expected to have an accuracy of at least seventy per cent, the great majority over eighty per cent. Premier League stats show an average passing accuracy of about 80% during the last five years, with several LFC players recording nearer 90%. The average accuracy of all one-third of a million Liverpool passes in the Premier League so far is 82%.

The equivalent figure for headers from the 55-match survey is close to 50%. Worst of all, included in these literally misguided passes were headers from an LFC/LFCW player to an opponent who immediately scored! Hansen, of all people, headed the ball to Everton scorer McCall during the 1989 Cup Final; Virgil (by far our most experienced passer of the ball for the club) provided Ross Barclay with an unwanted headed assist for Chelsea’s second goal in the fifth round FA Cup tie in 2020; and LFCW captain Fahey headed to Wälti who scored Arsenal’s first goal in 2022. Against Real Madrid in 2018, LFC’s passes were 78% accurate, yet 11 of their 14 headers went astray.

The accuracy of LFCW headers has not improved with the reduction in numbers – 53% gifting the ball to the other side.

This level of inaccuracy, if resulting from passes with the foot, would quickly result in players losing their place in the team. In other words, PL and WSL players are far more accurate with any other legitimate parts of the body than the head, and I have a strong, though unprovable, suspicion that the better the team, the smaller the number of headers. 

Finale

By the 1960s, it was generally known that smoking causes ill health, if not death. Yet smoking has not been banned for 60 years (except for children, as is being done for headers now, an idea trialed in the USA), merely discouraged, and has been perpetuated in order to satisfy claims of freedom to enjoy smoking, to bypass the nanny state for which we have all paid since 1948, and to benefit the Treasury. Are we to do the same with headers in order to protect what are, after all, quite arbitrary, albeit long standing, rules of the game? Association football does not depend on the ball being headed nearly as much as rugby football depends on tackling – but how many lives will be blighted by dementia before common sense prevails?

What would be lost from the game if heading a ball became a thing of the past? How much would the game change, for better or worse? There would no longer be any point in sending high balls to a colleague if they’re not allowed to head it. Clash of heads would be almost eliminated from the game – there would be little point in jumping together if they weren’t allowed to head the ball anyway! One argument against such a ban is that soccer will lose some of its excitement. Think of the last-minute Alisson Becker goal against West Brom in 2021, the Gerrard goal in Istanbul and so on. But would we really miss seeing defenders heading off the line? Not if the player was Gary Neville!

What is being proposed is not a change in lifestyle, like banning smoking – merely a change in the rules. Rule makers could start by treating headers exactly in the same way as hand ball; then make appropriate, relatively small, adjustments. I’m not convinced that the ban should apply to goalkeepers in their area, as their headers are very rare – collectors’ pieces you might say – but not outside the area, like the last minute Alisson goal in 2021. Accidental headers can be treated in the same way as accidental handball. Banning headers will not change the modern game substantially – only the rules.

From the slow change revealed in the above stats, it seems that clubs and players are doing anyway what the governing bodies and PFA seem reluctant to introduce. Meanwhile the medics’ advice is to use your head and DON’T USE YOUR HEAD!!!

Copyright - Colin Rogers for LFChistory.net