Headed clearances are rising significantly - football should not ignore the health risks

English football is heading backwards—literally. Opta data shows that Premier League headed clearances have jumped by roughly 50 per cent in the past two seasons, while League Two has seen an almost 100 per cent surge. The numbers are not merely a statistical curiosity; they coincide with renewed warnings about the long-term damage caused by repetitive head impacts.

The issue was thrown into sharp relief last month when senior coroner Jonathan Heath ruled that former Manchester United and Scotland defender Gordon McQueen’s death in 2023, aged 70, was contributed to by chronic traumatic encephalopathy brought on by a career of repeated headers. “I am satisfied on the balance of probability that repeatedly heading footballs contributed to his developing CTE,” Heath wrote. McQueen, a dominant aerial centre-back, was “renowned for his heading skills”, his Guardian obituary noted.

Professor Willie Stewart, the leading neurosurgeon studying football-related brain injury, has found that outfield players—particularly defenders—develop CTE at markedly higher rates than goalkeepers or the general population. The positional split dovetails with Opta’s definition of “headed clearances”, headers that typically follow long balls, crosses, corners or free-kicks—exactly the scenarios the Football Association classes as “higher-force” and recommends limiting to ten per player per training week.

Yet training-ground reality appears to outstrip the guideline. Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glasner admitted his squad spent “almost solely” preparing for set-pieces before a recent 2-0 win over Brentford that featured a goal from a long free-kick and another from a long throw. If sessions revolve around deliveries into the box, players can easily exceed the advised weekly cap in a single afternoon.

The tactical shift is league-wide. Arsenal, top of the Premier League despite a perceived lack of open-play goals, have become heavily dependent on set-piece situations, with centre-back Gabriel frequently attacking whipped crosses. Their success has legitimised an approach that lower-division sides, many of whom abandoned tiki-taka mimicry, now copy. Pep Guardiola’s occasional use of four centre-backs has been interpreted lower down as a green light for old-school, aerial-heavy football, despite the technical gulf.

Counter-intuitively, the modern ball—lighter when dry but struck harder and travelling faster—may transmit comparable or greater force on impact than the water-logged leather versions used in McQueen’s era. His daughter, Sky Sports reporter Hayley McQueen, warned against complacency, noting velocity can offset weight.

A partial mitigation already emerging sees a higher share of headers confined to the penalty areas—32 per cent now versus 26 per cent in 2018-19—mirroring the rise of playing out from back and long-throw routines. Yet because total headers have ballooned, the absolute number of higher-force impacts inside the boxes has still climbed.

Ideas for reform include restricting headers to the penalty areas only, a tweak that would spare midfielders but still leave centre-backs and target forwards exposed. The FA has pioneered youth heading limits and continues to fund research, yet the sport’s direction of travel has reversed since the days when Roberto Firmino’s false-nine stylings appeared to make the bruising centre-forward obsolete.

With lower leagues locked in an arms race of aerial specialists, and Premier League leaders celebrating set-piece supremacy, English football confronts an uncomfortable truth: the more it prizes headed clearances, the more it risks another generation of players facing the fate documented so starkly in Gordon McQueen’s coroner report.