Women's Soccer and Brain Injuries

I've been expecting to see an article like this. It is distressing, and you see lots of head clashes on the soccer field.

What's the solution? Wearing helmets doesn't seem to protect American football players. In fact, wearing protective clothing may just encourage players to hit each other harder. I think wearing no pads for football might decrease injuries, not increase them.

 

Soccer players wearing those so call headg uards don't do anything except maybe prevent your skull from cracking wide open. As long as your brain is floating and moving around, it doesn't prevent brain injuries when hitting your head on something.

 

Some time ago I read a study where they showed that the improvements in American Football gear did actually increase not the number of injuries but the severity thereof. In particular they showed that modern helmets caused much more sever head and neck injuries. The reason was theorized to be that modern helmets locked the head in place allowing vibrations to twist and vibrate the head, neck and even the brain itself. Older helmets would allow the head to move inside the helmet and that actually prevented serious injury.

I do think there are now helmets that help prevent head injuries but most players, even those that really need them, refuse to wear them because, they say, it makes them look like weak sisters.

Helmets in soccer are a lot like any preventative medicine. It will not be implemented until the benefits can be proven in such a way that the common man can understand the reasons or until it gets mandated by the higher authority. Even today many/most soccer players, both male and female, refuse to wear shin guards that have any real protection.

I believe that the sport of soccer, and most other sports, need better protection for the players but improvements in equipment are usually aimed at making the human body a better weapon and not at protecting players.

 

While I agree wholeheartedly with you about American Football (or armored sumo wrestling as I think of it) I do not believe that heading in soccer is any real problem. The problem is head to head or head to ground or head to goalpost. If properly taught and executed there is little or no chance of cu or contra cu brain injury because the ball does not cause the brain to slosh around in the head. Again properly executed heading of the ball is pretty safe. The problem is that soccer players, even at the professional level, do not really learn and use proper technique. The other part of the problem is challenged headers. When challenged it is nearly impossible to use proper technique. There is also the very real possibility of head to head contact and the chance of head to ground is also increased when headers are challenged.

There are, for soccer, very effective helmets the problem is that players will not wear them. It took almost major force to get hockey players to wear helmets and hokey is more dangerous to the head than soccer. Helmets need to be mandated and we will see a huge drop in head injuries. But I doubt that will happen because too many players, officials and fans do not care. They prefer to see people injured, sometimes for life, than pu the ugly helmets on player's heads.

Form a personal point of view it will spoil the "big hair" around soccer but I can live with that if it saves careers and lives.

 

Sports have risks.

 

Thank you for posting that article. Soccer is a dangerous game with many risks involved. Maybe, hopefully!, being less macho, women's teams can take the concussion protocol seriously - even ramping it up- since females seem to be more susceptible to concussions than males.