For a list of over 100 UK footballers with dementia see
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There are cases of dementia (Alzheimer’s disease) in former Newcastle players. Charlie Crow: Newcastle United (1944–1956) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
John McNamee: Newcastle United (1966–1971) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Mick Harford: Newcastle United (1980–1981) states that I have got memory loss … I know that 100 per cent.
Alan Shearer’s documentary asked how many footballers have had dementia. The concern is that footballers are suffering from brain damage in a similar way to boxers.
Paul Pender (1930-2003) was a world champion middleweight boxer Pender had CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy); also known as pugilistic dementia, boxer's dementia or boxer’s brain
Jeff Astle, West Bromwich (1964–1974) was shown to have CTE: a condition found in boxers and confused with Alzheimer's
Many footballers could have been misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's when in fact they had CTE caused by head injuries
The risk of brain injury, from heading footballs, is open to debate. However, brain injury is not caused by kicking a football. Heading could be taken out of the game.
You could have a 5-a-side kick-ball game played on a full-sized pitch.
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Shearer scored 283 league goals in his career (all in the first tier of English football), including a record 260 in the Premier League[notes 1] (of which 58 were penalties) with a record 11 Premier League hat-tricks, and a total of 422 in all competitions including international at all levels. Until his retirement from international football in 2000, he appeared 63 times for his country and scored 30 goals.[4][5] Shearer had a goals-to-game ratio of 0.667 throughout his career.
Since retiring as a player in 2006, Shearer has worked as a television pundit for the BBC. In 2009, he briefly left his BBC role to become Newcastle United's manager in the last eight games of their 2008–09 season, in an unsuccessful attempt to save them from relegation. Shearer is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), a Deputy Lieutenant of Northumberland, a Freeman of Newcastle upon Tyne and an honorary Doctor of Civil Law of Northumbria and Newcastle Universities.
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In May 2016, in the 50th anniversary year of England's world cup victory the Daily Telegraph compared football with the 1960s tobacco industry. It said the authorities risked legal action because of a “scandalous” failure to research dementia amongst former players, due to a combination of repeated heading of the ball and from collisions that might have occurred during a game. The newspaper also criticised the non-appearance of a risk study following Astle's death and launched a campaign to investigate football related brain injuries. The Telegraph called for research to answer the question, 'Does playing football increase your risk of dementia and other degenerative brain diseases?’ [18] In November 2017, a BBC documentary on the subject presented by former England striker Alan Shearer included an interview with Astle's daughter where she spoke of the deterioration in her father's condition.
