'The old me now would look back at the teen years and say: Don't head it very often': Gary Lineker admits he would have limited heading a football when he was younger had he known the dangers to his health as a striker
- Gary Lineker says he would have headed the ball less had he known of risks
- Sportsmail launched a campaign last year to tackle dementia issues in football
- Lineker claims he would tell his younger self not to head the ball so often
- The 60-year-old told Sportsmail last year he did duck out of aerial challenges
Gary Lineker admitted he would have headed the ball less in his playing days had he known of the dangers it may pose regarding dementia.
Several former professional players, including Sir Bobby Charlton, Gordon McQueen and Nobby Stiles, have been diagnosed with the illness, including five members of England's 1966 World Cup winning squad.
Several figures within the football industry have implored the Government to analyse the link between football and long-term brain illness - with one potential reason for dementia being the heading of a football.
Gary Lineker claims he would have headed the ball less had he known if there were any risks
The England striker scored 15 out of his 48 England goals with his head and now there may be links between heading the ball and dementia
Former England striker Lineker, who scored 15 out of his 48 international goals with his head, revealed he would tell his younger self to not head the ball so much - but claimed the teenage striker may not have listened.
The 60-year-old told talkSPORT: 'If I'd known what I know now, I would have certainly limited the heading I did when I was younger. No question about that, no question.
'Whether that would have made me not as good a footballer, whether I would have been not as good as heading the ball as I actually was, it's impossible to say.
'But of course I would (have headed the ball less). But would I have said that to myself when I was 17, 18? I don't know because it's easy now with the benefit of hindsight and we're starting to see these problems are manifesting themselves.
Lineker did claim his younger self may have not listened to any concerns raised back then
'The old me now, which is a very old me, looking back at my teen years would say don't head it very often. I think the teenage part of me, the one that was so ambitious to get the top would have overridden that.'
Last year, Sportsmail launched a campaign to tackle links between football and dementia - and the PFA have since made major steps towards investigating the matter.
A dedicated dementia department has been created, and the PFA will fight harder to have brain degeneration in footballers defined as an industrial disease.
The Premier League is also now trialling the use of concussion substitutes to allow for greater examination into head injuries sustained on the pitch.
Lineker (second left) even claimed he let other defenders win headers due to certain fears
Lineker told Sportsmail after the launch of the campaign that he would sometimes duck out of aerial challenges on the pitch as he didn't want the hard ball landing on top of his head.
The Match of the Day presenter recalled in November: 'I'd done a lot of heading when I was young. We did a lot of training and crossing exercises at Leicester when I was 18 or 19. I can't remember any specific moment that made me start to change but I did start to think.
'But even when we played, we didn't have new balls in training every week and they'd get claggy with water and heavier and heavier the more you used them. When you did sometimes head one on a wet day, you'd think, "Christ!"
'I wasn't particularly tall and you didn't want the thing landing on the top of your head. So I used to let the centre halves have those. You'd back into them while they watched them come down and then lunge forward and get a free-kick.'
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