Nobby Stiles, England’s 1966 World Cup winner, died from brain disease caused by repeated soccer headings, a coroner has ruled.
Stiles, a former Manchester United midfielder who died aged 78 from severe dementia almost six years ago, had scored around 140,000 headers in football during his career, a Stockport coroner’s inquest into his death heard.
An expert brain analysis found that his severe dementia was a result of Alzheimer’s disease as well as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is linked to head trauma from heading a ball.
Neuropathology expert Dr Daniel Du Plessis told the court: “I’m sure his headers have caused CTE on multiple occasions.”
Alison Mutch, South Manchester’s chief medical examiner, asked Dr Du Plessis: “Are you saying that repeated heading of the ball was the cause of CTE?”
“Yes.” Dr. Du Plessis answered.
Born in Collyhurst, Manchester in 1942, Norbert ‘Nobby’ Stiles was a tough-tacking defensive midfielder who won 28 caps for England and almost 400 for Manchester United.
Mr Stiles, who lived in Stratford, south Manchester, died in a care home on October 30, 2020, after being bedridden due to severe dementia.
In January 2024, his family raised the possibility that CTE may have contributed to his death, and Dr. Du Plessis examined brain tissue samples to reach a medical conclusion.
Styles’ family have campaigned for football authorities to do more to help former players deal with injuries sustained during matches.
Styles is estimated to have headed the ball around 140,000 times during his career.
Stiles’ son John previously said football “killed” his father.
“My father was very humble and just so happened to have achieved quite a lot,” Mr Stiles said at the hearing.
“It didn’t change him at all. If you went to his house you would never know he was a footballer.
“He was very much a family man and football was left at the door. Family was always the number one priority.”
“It’s strange that we’re having this conversation on a day like this,” Coroner Mutch told Stiles. However, the witness said his father “never said anything or boasted” about being a World Cup winner.
He added: “He was proud of it, but we were always much more proud of his father than the footballer.”
Mr Stiles told the court his father loved Manchester United and the Busby Babes and joined the club as an apprentice in 1957 at the age of 15.
Stiles won the European Cup with Manchester United in 1968.
He watched his father during training and matches and estimated that he headed the ball around 40 times a day, five days a week, during his 17-year career. A conservative estimate would be a total of 136,000 headers.
And he said that when his father played, the footballs weighed about 16 ounces, but they get heavier when they get wet.
He said modern balls on the court no longer absorb water, but studies have shown that heading even modern balls accounts for about 80 percent of the impact of a boxer’s punch.
Mr. Stiles said that when his father was in his late 50s and early 60s, his family noticed that he began forgetting and repeating things.
In 2010, he sold his championship medal to pay for treatment as his mental difficulties progressed, causing him to feel increasingly anxious and hopeless.
“To be honest, he was scared,” Mr. Stiles said of his father.
John Stiles is the head of the group Football Families for Justice (FFJ), which is calling on football authorities to do more for former players.
He is one of dozens of former footballers and their families who have sued the Football Association, the Football Association of Wales and the English Football League, alleging “negligence and breach of duty of care” towards former players.
Lawyers for the former players and their families have previously said the football body knew or should have known that repeatedly heading the ball during training or matches is likely to cause brain damage and that the risk has been known for decades.
In March this year, lawyers for the FA told the High Court that it was ‘not scientifically proven’ that heading a ball or an ‘intermittent’ concussion could cause permanent brain damage.
In January, an inquest into the death of former Scotland Manchester United and Leeds defender Gordon McQueen, 70, found that heading the ball was “highly likely” to have caused the brain damage that caused his death.
McQueen was also diagnosed with CTE.
McQueen’s TV presenter daughter Hayley McQueen said the 1966 World Cup-winning England team was now “almost wiped out” by a neurodegenerative disease.
The FA co-funded a 2019 study with the Professional Footballers’ Association, which found that footballers were 3.5 times more likely to die from neurodegenerative diseases than the general population of the same age.
The FA plans to phase out all heading football for under-11s by 2026.
