Christian Fuchs heading during the Premier League match between Chelsea and Leicester City at Stamford Bridge on October 15, 2016 in London, England.

In a continued to effort to study and research the harm that a player exposes themselves to in the sports world, researchers in Scotland have determined a soccer player’s brain and memory function can be affected for up to 24 hours after taking a ball off the head.

According to a study from The University of Stirling, heading a soccer ball 20 times can reduce memory performance between 41% and 67% in a 24-hour span after contact between the ball and the head. The study suggests younger players should avoid soccer activity in the 24 hours before taking any exams. That seems like sound advice, given the results researched and analyzed in this study.

“I think this evidence so far suggests – that if it’s just a short term thing and it’s just something that lasts 24 hours – I think if I were a parent of a kid who had an exam on a Wednesday, I would suggest to them perhaps that they miss football training [on Tuesday] certainly because I would want to do well in that Wednesday afternoon exam,” neuropathologist Dr. Willie Stewart said in the study’s report.

“If you translate the evidence we’ve got now, we’ve got an immediate impairment of short and long-term memory – which does recover,” Stewart added. “It takes 24 hours to recover – so I would say, for that 24-hour period, if you’ve got something important coming up, that you shouldn’t be playing football.”

So, other than making heading a soccer ball an illegal move (which is more likely to be done at the younger levels of the sport), what can be done to reduce the risk and harm this move has on a player? Make the ball out of a softer or less harmful material? Do that and the game itself would be impacted as well by a ball that may lose speed and resistance.

Check out how this study was conducted too. Via BBC;

Researchers fired footballs from a machine designed to simulate the pace and power of a corner kick and asked a group of football players to head a ball 20 times.

The players’ brain function and memory were tested before and after the exercise.

Imagine volunteering to have soccer balls shot at your head. I hope they got some good pay out of that.

[BBC]

About Kevin McGuire

Contributor to Athlon Sports and The Comeback. Previously contributed to NBCSports.com. Host of the Locked On Nittany Lions Podcast. FWAA member and Philadelphia-area resident.