Former England striker Chris Sutton has accused Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive Gordon Taylor of failing his members and their families over the issue of dementia. The findings report that the “risk ranged from a five-fold increase in Alzheimer’s disease, through an approximately four-fold increase in motor neurone disease, to a two-fold (increase in) Parkinson’s disease in former professional footballers compared to population controls”. In a Daily Telegraph interview in 2017, Sutton said that his father Mike, a former Norwich player and then aged 72, had been suffering from dementia for the past six years. Sutton said he first became aware of the potential link between football and dementia when he heard about the plight of Duncan Forbes, the former Norwich player. Would be interesting to find out if the modern lighter ball and the shift away from long ball football improves the statistics.

Source: Express October 21, 2019 16:30 UTC