Although soccer is considered a non-contact sport with less impact than football and fewer muscle injuries than basketball, it nonetheless involves physical danger and contact to its participants. Soccer players bump into each other, creating a person-to-person contact; fall down, invoking a person to ground or person to goalpost contact, and inherent in the sport is person to ball contact. When all you have to use for equipment is your own body against the leather ball moving as quickly as 100 km an hour, you can expect that contact to be forceful indeed.
Heading the ball
One of the fundamental rules of soccer is that you can hit the ball with anything except your hands. This leaves the feet and legs, upper arms and shoulders, and of course, the head. Hitting the ball with your head can be a prolific way to advance the ball to a player or stop it from going into your goal. Unfortunately when the ball makes impact with your head not all of the force is transmitted to the ball. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, between 4 and 22% of all soccer injuries are head injuries. The Academy is quick to point out not all of these injuries come from the ball, and many occur when an athlete falls or runs into a goalpost. However, studies from college sports indicate concussion and severe headache are known injuries for soccer players.
Long-term damage
While many think of soccer as a harmless sport, the truth is impact with the ball can create contact at the same level as someone who was boxing, playing football, ice hockey or wrestling. Soccer players have been known to show a high percentage of abnormal electroencephalograms (EEG's). Repetitive head trauma has been known to cause neurological problems. It should be noted that not all positions in soccer require the player to use their head.
Goalies and midfielders who are considered "non-headers" show much less potential for injury than forwards and defenders. Studies of potential long-term damage have also been limited to professional soccer players who head the ball hundreds of times a season. There have not been studies performed on children or recreational players to show whether concussions from a statistically small level of play can create brain damage.
Academic problems
A growing concern among parents whose children play soccer at school is increasing studies which show some subjects tested after playing soccer and heading the ball perform poorly on IQ tests and can suffer from problems with attention, concentrating in class, behavior and memory retention.
It is unknown how many of these problems stem from soccer and contact with the ball and how many of these concerns children had prior to playing or developed because of the high level endorphins inspired by athletic play. However, parents with children who have attention deficit disorder should be aware that heading the ball can lead to continued head injury and the potential for behavior concerns to disrupt classroom behavior.
Opinions have formed on both sides of the issue as to whether or not soccer can cause head injuries or brain damage. However, one thing is clear. Getting hit in the head repeatedly with a leather ball, going 100 kilometers per hour is simply not good for you.
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