As the U.S. Women’s National Team gears up for Friday’s World Cup quarter final against France, two former soccer stars are raising concerns about the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy in their sport.
Michelle Akers and Brandi Chastain, who scored both goals in the team’s historic 1991 Women’s World Cup Final victory, appeared on CBS this week to chat about CTE. Now in their early 50s, the two are participating in a study about how the disease can affect athletes later in life, according to CBS This Morning.
Evidence of the disease has been found in former NFL players, and is tied to a flurry of innovation centered on reducing head injuries in football. There has been growing concern recently about the potential of CTE affecting other sports, such as rugby and soccer.
A study released this week by researchers and clinicians in Sydney revealed that signs of CTE have been found in the brains of two former Australian rugby league players who had played more than 150 National Rugby League games over their careers. In the study, published on Thursday in the medical journal Acta Neuropathologica, researchers claimed that to their knowledge these were the first two reported cases of CTE in rugby in the world, and only the second and third cases of CTE in Australian athletes.
On “CBS This Morning,” Akers, who played center midfield for the USWNT and is regarded as one of the best players in women’s soccer history, said she would head the ball as many as 50 times a game. Both Akers and Chastain said they’re now suffering from memory loss, and are determined to find out whether their symptoms are a normal effect of old age, or whether something more sinister, such as CTE, is at play.
The two have joined a long-term study at the Boston University School of Medicine to look at the possible cognitive effects of sports-related head trauma. The study will follow 20 former high-level female soccer players who are aged 40 and over. Baseline testing includes an MRI of the brain and an evaluation of cognitive function, according to CBS.
“What we’re concerned about for CTE are all of those subtler repeated hits that we refer to as sub-concussive trauma,” said Robert Stern, a professor of neurology at Boston University and clinical director of the school’s CTE Center. “I’m concerned that this game played by hundreds of millions across the globe might be played in a way right now that could lead to later life brain disease. That’s pretty scary.”
Akers said she became aware of the possibility of CTE in soccer after watching a 2017 documentary about Alan Shearer, who played in the English Premier League until 2000. Shearer holds the record for the most EPL goals, having scored 260 during his career. He scored a fifth of those with his head.
When asked by CBS whether she’d do anything differently after knowing what she does now, Akers said she wouldn’t head “a million balls like that.”
“There’s no way on Earth I would do that again,” she said.
Meanwhile, Chastain, who is now a youth soccer coach, said she discourages her school-aged female athletes from pursuing headers.
“With my young players, I’m not encouraging them to head those balls,” she said. “Muscularly, they’re not strong enough for the weight of the ball, the speed of the ball.”