Tierney, GJ orcid.org/0000-0002-4666-4473 and Higgins, B (2021) The incidence and mechanism of heading in European professional football players over three seasons. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 31 (4). pp. 875-883. ISSN 0905-7188
Abstract
There are concerns surrounding the risk of neurodegenerative diseases associated with football (soccer) heading. The aim of this study was to conduct analysis on the incidence and mechanism of heading in the “Big 5” professional European football leagues (Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Premier League, La Liga and Serie A) and one lower tier professional league (English Championship) from 2016/17‐2018/19. Match event data from 7147 matches were obtained from Opta Sports data feed. The data were parsed to extract header event details including player position, coordinates on the field, header type and preceding match event (including distance football travelled). Incidence data were reported as headers per match or match headers per player. Medians and interquartile ranges (IQR) were reported and either the Mann‐Whitney U‐Test or Kruskal‐Wallis test were conducted for comparisons between positions and leagues. In the “Big 5” leagues, the most headers per match occurred during the Premier League (111.2 headers per match). However, the lower tier English Championship had the highest number of headers per match overall (139.0 headers per match). In all leagues, defenders had the greatest median number of match headers per player (p<0.001). The highest median distance travelled by the football during a preceding match event was for goal kicks (57.5 m; IQR 53.7‐61.1). The findings add necessary information for current longitudinal studies aiming to understand the potential link between football heading and neurodegenerative diseases. These studies should account for league, playing position and level of play.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science In Sports published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biomedical Sciences (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Dec 2020 16:29 |
Last Modified: | 06 Jan 2023 12:31 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/sms.13900 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:168826 |