The FA’s Defence Shows Football Is Still Fighting the Wrong Battle on Brain Injury

“No Proof” Is Not a Player Welfare Strategy

The FA’s legal defence goes to a courtroom threshold.

Can the claimants prove that heading, concussion or repeated head impacts caused long-term neurological damage? Can they prove what the FA knew at the relevant time? Can they prove that a duty was owed and breached?

Those questions belong to the court.

Player welfare should be held to a different standard. The scientific and practical question is not whether every historical claim can be proved with perfect certainty. It is whether repeated head impact exposure creates a risk that can and should be reduced.

That answer is already clear enough for action.

A growing body of research recognises that brain injury in sport is not limited to diagnosed concussion. Repeated sub-concussive impacts do not produce symptoms, but they still expose the brain to damage over time. Rotational forces cause shear strain within brain tissue, which is associated with tearing of tiny blood vessels and brain cells resulting, over time, in the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier and the creation of damaging microscopic neuro-inflammation. Research on repeated sub-concussive head impacts has reported measurable effects on brain health and has linked cumulative exposure with changes in cognition, brain function and neurological risk ^[5].

This is where football is still fighting the wrong battle. The legal debate is focused on whether historic causation can be proved. The player welfare debate should be focused on whether current exposure can be reduced.

What We Know Now

The science of sport-related brain injury has moved well beyond the idea that only diagnosed concussion matters.

When the head is struck, the brain rotates inside the skull. Rotational acceleration is particularly important because it creates shearing forces across brain tissue, blood vessels and white matter pathways ^[6].

This matters in football because the game involves repeated opportunities for angled impact: aerial challenges, head-to-head contact, elbows, knees, goalkeeper collisions, falls and head-to-ground impacts. These forces do not need to result in concussion to matter biomechanically. The concern is cumulative exposure.

Repeated impacts are also being studied in relation to biological processes including neuroinflammation, blood-brain barrier disruption and cellular damage. Research has shown that repeated sub-concussive impacts can disrupt blood-brain barrier integrity ^[7]. A 2024 review by the Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence also reported that multiple concussions and repetitive sub-concussive head impacts have been associated with altered white matter microstructure and blood-brain barrier disruption ^[8].

Football-specific evidence also supports a precautionary approach. The FOCUS study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that retired male professional footballers who reported heading more than 15 times per match or training session had more than a threefold risk of cognitive impairment compared with those reporting 0 to 5 headers ^[9]. The FA itself highlighted the publication of those findings in 2023 ^[10].

That does not mean every player exposed to heading or collision will develop neurological disease. It does mean that the old distinction between “concussed” and “not concussed” is no longer adequate for modern sport.

Football’s current risk strategy remains too focused on what happens after a suspected concussion. That is necessary, but incomplete. Concussion protocols identify and manage injury after a brain injury event has already occurred. The damage has already been done. They do not reduce rotational force at the point of contact. And by design, they ignore the frequent sub-concussive impacts that never trigger a protocol.

The biggest concern in sport is cumulative damage from repeated concussive and sub-concussive impacts that injure the brain, and the response therefore has to be cumulative protection.

Heading Is Only Part of the Problem

Football’s public brain injury debate has focused heavily on heading. That is understandable. Heading is visible, deliberate and specific to the sport.

But heading is not the whole problem.

A biomechanical investigation of head impacts in football, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, analysed 62 head-impact cases from F-MARC video and found that ball contact accounted for 13% of recorded head impacts. The largest categories were upper extremity contact at 38% and head-to-head contact at 30%, with knee contact also accounting for 13% ^[11].

That finding changes the protection conversation.

Reducing heading exposure is important, especially in children. But it cannot be football’s full brain protection strategy. A heading restriction addresses one visible source of risk while leaving the majority of head impacts untouched.

This does not weaken the case for reducing heading. It strengthens the case for reducing risk further.

If football narrows the debate to whether heading alone can be proved to cause long-term brain damage, it misses the wider issue. The real risk is not only the act of heading the ball. It is the repeated transmission of rotational forces to the brain through all forms of concussive and sub-concussive head impact.

Football does not need a single-cause explanation before acting. It needs a whole-exposure strategy.

The Risk Starts in Youth Sport

The litigation is focused on former professional players, but the exposure starts much earlier. It starts with the grassroots players on school and club pitches today.

Children experience head impacts before they are old enough to understand long-term risk. They rely on adults, clubs, schools and governing bodies to make safe decisions on their behalf. That is why youth and grassroots sport should sit at the centre of this debate, not at its edge.

The FA has already accepted that heading exposure in children should be reduced. In 2024, it confirmed that deliberate heading would be phased out in affiliated grassroots football between U7 and U11 levels over three seasons, following an IFAB trial ^[12].

That is an important step. But it does not address the full risk.

Children still fall. They still collide. They still mistime challenges. They still experience accidental head contact. And they still head the football despite being told not to. They have developing brains, developing bodies and less capacity to recognise or report symptoms. By the time a player reaches the professional game, years of exposure have already occurred.

This is the same lesson seen in rugby league. Shane Christie’s case is not football, but it is directly relevant to the wider question of youth head impact exposure. The story of neurodegenerative diseases, including CTE, does not begin at the professional level; it begins when concussive and sub-concussive exposure begins.

If sport is serious about brain protection, it cannot begin when athletes become elite. It must begin when the first head impacts begin.

Gordon McQueen Shows Why This Cannot Stay Theoretical

Gordon McQueen’s case brought football’s brain injury debate into sharp focus.

In January 2026, a coroner concluded that repeated heading likely contributed to McQueen’s chronic traumatic encephalopathy. AP reported that the coroner found McQueen’s death was partly caused by CTE and that repeated heading during his playing career likely contributed to its development ^[13].

The McQueen ruling does not resolve every legal question in the FA case. It does not prove every individual claim. But it does show why protection can no longer be deferred until all uncertainty has disappeared.

Sport has a habit of treating uncertainty as a reason to wait. Brain injury demands the opposite. Where concussive and sub-concussive exposure is repeated, the brain is developing, and the potential consequences are life-changing, uncertainty should drive precaution.

The Real Failure Is Present-Day Risk Management

The FA’s defence may succeed or fail in court. That is for the legal process to decide.

But the more important welfare question is already in front of football: what is being done now to reduce brain impact exposure for the current and next generation of players?

That question cannot be answered by concussion protocols alone. It cannot be answered by heading limits alone. It cannot be answered by historic arguments over whether or not the science was sufficiently settled decades ago.

A modern brain protection strategy must reduce cumulative exposure, reduce force transmission and recognise that sub-concussive impacts matter. It must address the sub-concussive impacts that actually happen in football, not only the ones that are easiest to regulate or diagnose.

The Current Generation Needs Protection Now

The FA’s legal defence may have to convince a court that the evidence linking heading, repeated head impacts and concussion to long-term brain damage is not proven to the required legal standard.

But players and parents do not need to wait for that ruling before acting.

The science has moved on. The legal actions across sport are growing. The evidence on cumulative brain injury exposure is stronger. The consequences are too serious to leave brain protection until after harm has occurred.

Football has already restricted heading in young children. Rugby is defending historic head impact litigation. AFL is facing group proceedings. Field hockey has seen individual concussion-related negligence claims. Across sport, the direction of travel is clear.

The next step is not more denial, delay or narrow argument about single mechanisms. The next step is brain protection.

If governing bodies are contesting responsibility in court, then players, parents, clubs and schools must take responsibility where they can. That means reducing unnecessary sub-concussive exposure, understanding rotational force, questioning whether existing head worn protection is fit for purpose, and protecting the brain before damage is done.

The FA may be fighting a legal battle about the past. The current generation of players, their parents and coaches need to act now to reduce their own risk.