The Random Football Debate Thread

Beautiful.

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Come on the Super White Army. Premiership here you come…

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Joe T was Trump’s lawyer in the Stormy and EJ Carroll cases

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https://x.com/FootballTalkHQ/status/1848616300999758063

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At some time in the future heading a football will be an offence. I worry about Virgil in particular. Too many have their heads in the sand on this issue not wanting to even contemplate a change. We as fans are taking pleasure in watching and applauding a facet of the game that is inflicting cumulative brain damage. A football weighs half a kilo and can travel up to 70mph. How many times will Virgil head a ball during his career? Would any one of us in our varied careers tolerate that number of impacts on our heads?

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This debate occurred before, not sure on here or TIA. I understand the concerns, but would ask a question on the correlation between heading the ball and excess alcohol intake in the studies carried out.
A lot of ex professionals “liked” a drink, and would therefore add another causal factor to their chances of suffering in later life.

I am not diminishing the data, but I think isolating one factor without looking at all the evidence produces biased statistics.

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I watched the discussion on BBC news earlier today and with the family’s consent the Consultant showed the brain scans. The evidence clearly showed, in this case anyway, that the damage was from multiple impacts and not alcohol. I presume that would show up as different lesions?

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I don’t know to be honest.
I suppose the experts can differentiate between impact lesions and those caused by other factors.

I am probably old school regarding heading as part of the game, but I expect it will be outlawed in the next few years.

Got quite a lot of attention when Jeff Astle passed away, i think because of his appearances on baddiel and skinner’s Fantasy League made him recognisable to a younger set of fans.

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Talking about CTE reminded me of Benoit.

The WWE wrestler who killed his family and then hung himself. He was suffering from CTE as the post mortem check showed.

When I coached kids football here in the States, heading was not allowed. You could start to head the ball at 12-13, but it wasn’t encouraged in practice. Then at 14 and up the restriction was lifted.

Some of the old school players headed a different ball to nowadays. I’m not saying there won’t be future injuries, but hopefully it won’t be as bad in future with the lighter ball.

With that said, I do expect to see the law change in years to come. It could even be a phased thing e.g. you can only head the ball in the box, then you can only head the ball as an attacker, then no heading at all.

It will be interesting to see how it progresses.

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People close to Real Madrid and Vini Jr. believe he lost the Ballon d’Or “due to his fight against systematic racism”, reveals Reuters.

:joy:

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This obsession with the fucking Ballon d’Or is ridiculous.

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One problem I’ve seen especially in amateur games is this desire to pump the ball full of air to the point it becomes overly heavy.

As a goalie I have issues with that anyhow. There is a maximum weight but some want it overly heavy for some unknown reason.

Anyhow the padding on some helps anyhow.

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Pumping the ball full of air wouldn’t have a material affect on it’s weight. It would make it harder, which would make heading it more of an issue…

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The first part is true although if you were to pump the ball, say…with the air Mikel and his players breathe then it would make it become softer.

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Having good quality balls helps too, a lot of people - even clubs - can’t afford the ones with proper padding that are over usually $50 per ball here in America.

I doubt heading itself is having that much of an impact (with the caveat that I have no real training beyond basic first aid and concussion training so I don’t really have a clue what I’m talking about) but I can see how head-to-head contact while trying to head a ball can be dangerous long term.

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