Ryan Giggs has called on sports bosses to act after a study linked heading the ball to a high risk of dementia in footballers.
Researchers found that ex-professional footballers were three-and-a-half times more likely to die of dementia than those in the same age range in the wider population.
Manchester United hero Giggs, 45, who is now manager of the Welsh national team, said: “The studies that have come out have worried a lot of people.
“Football has made enormous steps in looking after the players but you can’t stop. These kind of studies need to be acted upon, whatever way that is.
“With players, back in the day when the balls were a lot heavier, it had an affect.”
Another former professional footballer, Blackburn striker Chris Sutton, 46, has called for an immediate ban on children heading the ball.
He said: “I have an eight-year-old daughter and I don’t want her receiving repeated blows to her head from heading footballs.”
He questioned why a week after the findings were revealed, the PFA and FA had not imposed a heading ban on under-12s.
He asked: “Are the findings not serious enough?”
The US banned children from heading the ball in 2014 and the Scottish FA is considering a similar move.
Nobby Stiles, Martin Peters and Ray Wilson, three players who helped England win the World Cup in 1966 were later diagnosed with dementia.
Their former team-mate, George Cohen, has also demanded an enquiry into dementia in football after the results of the study, which tracked 7,600 ex-professionals and compared them to 23,000 similar individuals in the general population.
In an exclusive interview with the Mirror, Cohen said: “There are a lot of unanswered questions and I think this needs to be fully investigated. We need more information.
“I imagine there will be many more players from that era.
“We had no idea, we were just doing our jobs and heading the ball.
“I never thought my old teammates would have suffered like they have. We didn’t understand in those days but we see it now the years have gone on.”
