In August 2021, following a study funded by the English Football Association and
the Professional Footballers’ Association, a leading researcher into the prevalence
of dementia in football encouraged the sport to consider whether heading was entirely necessary.
On the publication of his group’s work, Dr Willie Stewart of the University of Glasgow commented
that “with the current data we’re now at the point to suggest that football should be sold
with a health warning”, while the research also indicated that instances of neurodegenerative
disease actually varied by position and number of games played, and not by era.
Dr Stewart’s recommendation at the time was that football
should consider eliminating heading altogether.
So, regardless of the likelihood or the politics involved in such a dramatic change,
what would that look like? How would a ban on heading affect football?
Now we’re not looking for a compromise. To combat the dangers posed, it’s been suggested
that heading could be restricted to certain areas of the pitch and, as clubs are currently advised,
that players should be limited in the number of powerful headers that can be
made in training sessions. Here though, we’re just concerned with dynamics and
how the game would change if the ability to head the ball was removed from the laws.
Statistically, that’s an interesting question: on average, between 10% and 20% of all goals
are scored with the head. During the 2019-20 season, for instance, 116 of the Bundesliga’s
728 goals were headers (15.9%). In the Premier League, that figure was lower: 116 of 784 total
goals were scored with the head (13.6%). It’s a number which rises and falls,
but which fluctuates according to tactical trends and the types of players in each league.
And that’s a good place to start with our headerless football - how
would it affect the players themselves? The assumption is that by banning heading,
football would usher in an era of smaller players, during which towering centre-halves
and centre-forwards would become less valuable and gradually, over time, disappear entirely.
But that seems wrong – or to anticipate a change that has already happened.
There are very few players left at the professional level who specialise solely
in heading a ball – at the back, even physically large players are expected to
be technically proficient. And the same is true in attack, where the lumbering targetman of old
has become a more rounded footballer, capable of linking play and both scoring and creating goals.
In both cases, strength and size are still advantages and even a ban
on heading wouldn’t obviously change that. But the dynamics of the sport would certainly
be altered and it’s easy to imagine the impact on certain aspects of the game.
Attacking corners would have to be completely re-imagined. Without the capacity to compete in
the air, the priority for an attacking team would be to keep their crosses away from the goalkeeper,
whose ease in catching or punching the ball would be greatly enhanced given their greater reach.
In a 2018 research paper entitled Mythbusting Set-Piece Myths in Soccer, author Paul Power
established that in-swinging corners created better opportunities than outswingers,
with 10.8% of the shots taken from them resulting in goals, versus 6.5%. Part of the reason for that
is how difficult an outswinger can be for a goalkeeper and the many distractions and
deviations they have to deal with and react to. As part of an article for The Athletic,
goalkeeper analyst Matt Pyzdrowski admitted that, as an ex-goalkeeper, he:
“hated inswingers more because the ball is coming towards you and you
have a load of people running towards you in a tight area and a lot can happen.”
By removing heading from the game – and with it the attacking side’s ability to flick the ball
on at the near-post – a goalkeeper would enjoy a more comfortable situation. Most likely, with
less aerial threat, their area of dominance would extend far out of the six-yard box. Away-swinging
corners would become more popular, while flatter, driven crosses would surely be the best way of
preventing goalkeepers from reaching the ball. Even then, the result of a corner in a
post-heading world would surely be a wild and dangerous scramble of the kind that defined
medieval forms of the game. It’s hard to envisage many goals being scored at all,
or even corners surviving within the laws, given the obvious chance of regular injury
and the ugliness of the resulting spectacle. The long throw-in would be another casualty.
It would survive in the rules, of course, but its effectiveness – which depends on
many of the same flick-ons and knock-downs as an inswinging corner – would be greatly diminished.
A goal can’t be scored directly from a throw-in, so even the flattest, fiercest
type – the Rory Delap long-throw – would lose most of its menace without a head to help it on.
But there are other areas in which attacking opportunity would actually be increased.
Without the security of being able to make headed clearances, for instance, defenders maintaining
a high-line would become more vulnerable to a quick ball over the top. It may be an attacking
strategy that exists already, but its execution would become significantly easier. Tactically,
this could lead to a deeper defensive line in compensation. Over the years and decades, it would
necessitate greater speed in centre-backs and condemn anyone who can’t keep pace with a Kylian
Mbappe or Son Heung-min to play somewhere else. Defending a cross in open play would likely become
far more difficult too. Anything above head height would be impossible to block before it
reaches its target and, even then, actually clearing the ball is likely to involve a
more awkward skill, with less margin of error. In what way is unclear and we can only speculate,
but a ban heading would clearly produce a dramatic change in the kind of defensive
techniques that players are taught and maybe, alongside a premium on speed,
a difference in the type of body types required. Longer legs, perhaps, instead of stronger necks.
But these impacts are just those felt in a specific part of the game and,
because most memorable headers occur in the penalty box, it’s easy to ignore just how
fundamental they are elsewhere. According to a report published by Statsbomb in 2020,
most games in the top five European leagues average around 75 headers per game. And yet
in the 2018-19 Premier League season, just 25.7% of all headers occurred within the 18-yard box.
That describes how fundamental they can be to the ordinary phases of the game, even if those headers
themselves are largely unremarkable. Contained within the remaining 74.3% of
the pitch are the headers from goalkicks, the headed wall-passes and even the little
touches with the head that help bring the ball under control. Essentially,
moments of continuity that would be lost, or needed to be replicated by some other means.
So, there’s no definitive answer as to what football would be like without heading. Nor,
in absolute terms, what kind of developments within the game that such a move would encourage.
What does seem clear, though, is that it would dramatically alter many more areas
of the sport than assumed and that, rather than a tweak, it would constitute minor revolution.