Fewer headers for pros, none for kids – British Football Association unveils protocols to protect players’ brains

The union representing British footballers will announce the first comprehensive protocol for preventing the brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), on Tuesday, expanding heightened concerns about concussion to include the damage that can be caused by the less powerful blows of heading the ball.

Guidelines from the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), which represents current and former players in the Premier League, the FA Women’s Super League and the English Football Leagues, recommend no more than 10 headers per week (including practice) for professionals.

Children under the age of twelve are not allowed to head the ball at all, according to the PFA. This is part of a prevention protocol for chronic traumatic encephalopathy designed to reduce impact to the head throughout a player’s life.

«CTE is preventable. Period,» Dr. Adam White, director of Brain Health at the PFA, said Monday at the first-ever Global CTE Summit, held in San Francisco as the NFL descended on the Bay Area for Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“It’s the principles of less course, less power, less often and later in life that matter,” White said The Associated Press. “These can apply to any sport and are the best hope we have of saving current and future players from the same fate as previous generations.”

Speakers at the summit included researchers, former athletes and lawmakers; The virtual and in-person audience also included family members who witnessed the dangers of CTE, which can cause memory loss, depression, violent mood swings and other cognitive and behavioral problems.

“This may be the most under-addressed public health problem in the world right now,” said former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. “CTE prevention requires courage – the courage to change tradition, the courage to confront denial, and the courage to put long-term health over short-term gain.”

The degenerative brain disease now known as CTE was studied in boxers more than a century ago as punch drunk syndrome and was first diagnosed in American football players in 2005.

It has since become a problem in ice hockey, football and other contact sports and among combat veterans and others who receive repeated blows to the head.

A 2017 study found CTE in 110 of 111 brains donated by former NFL players. The disease can only be diagnosed posthumously by examining the brain.

NFL Hall of Famer Warren Sapp, speaking about an hour’s drive from Levi’s Stadium on the day of the much-hyped Opening Night of the Super Bowl, said the focus should not be solely on professionals, who are at least compensated and able to make informed decisions about the risks of playing a dangerous sport.

“It is our duty to the game to make it better,” he said. “It’s the way we apply it to our children and the age we give it to them.”

The NFL, college football and many other sports have established protocols that guide teams and athletes as they resume play after sustaining a possible concussion.

But the British football protocol, a copy of which was obtained by the APis the first comprehensive plan to combat CTE by targeting the less dramatic, sub-concussive strokes that commonly occur in practice, according to Chris Nowinski, the founder of the Concussion and CTE Foundation.

“For contact sports, CTE prevention protocols are as important and possibly more important than concussion protocols,” he said.

More recent concerns include the routine head impacts suffered by football linemen and those suffered by football players heading the ball. Research funded by the union and Football Association has found that Scottish professionals have a risk of dementia 3.5 times that of the general population; Research into the brains of British footballers found that the majority had CTE, including Jeff Astle, Gordon McQueen and Chris Nicholl.

“With what we know today about the disease, it would be a failure for our players to do nothing,” White said in a statement. «The science and the solutions are clear; it just takes a willingness from sports organizations to put the long-term health of athletes first, and I’m glad we’ve been able to do that in England. I encourage all sports to put as much, if not more, effort into CTE prevention protocols as they have concussion protocols.»

The protocol also includes annual education, research support and care for former players suspected of living with CTE. It follows the publication of a CTE prevention framework published in 2023 by researchers at the Concussion and CTE Foundation and Boston University’s CTE Center.

Nowinski called on sports leagues and their medical advisors to adopt CTE prevention protocols.

“There is now overwhelming evidence that more head impacts in sports will result in more athletes with CTE,” Nowinski said. «Sports administrators do not risk CTE themselves, but the policies they impose doom some athletes to a life with CTE, a burden that will be borne primarily by their spouses and children. Enough is enough.»

Published on February 3, 2026