Training day-in, day-out with David Beckham. It is the sort of memory that should represent a career highlight but, as David May reflects on crossing practice with the legendary Manchester United team of the 1990s and 2000s, he now winces.
“I used to do heading practice with Becks from free-kicks and corners and, I’m telling you now, the pace he used to whip those balls in was incredible,” he says. “If you got it wrong, oh my god, it murdered you. It was like a punch in the face off a boxer. You’d see stars.
“People go on about the [old leather] ball. When it was wet, it got incredibly heavy. It would be like heading a medicine ball but, with today’s technology, the ball moves a hell of a lot quicker. Look at the 1966 World Cup and the last World Cup and how quick the ball travels. It flies.”
The context of our conversation is the recent launch of the Football Families for Justice group of former players and loved ones who are demanding urgent action to tackle the national game’s dementia crisis.
Evidence staring game in face is startling
Research commissioned by the Football Association back in 2017 – which directly followed a Telegraph Sport campaign – found that former defenders like May are five times more likely to be diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease than someone who was not a professional player. The landmark study by the University of Glasgow also found no decline in that ratio through the eras, with Prof Willie Stewart further isolating the link last year to heading and head impacts rather than any outside lifestyle factor.
The real-life evidence staring football in the face is equally startling. The campaign launch contained heart-breaking testimony from the families of men like Tony Parkes, who does not now recognise his beloved daughter Natalie, Chris Nicholl, who died last year on the same day as Stan Bowles (another dementia sufferer), and Allan Gilliver, the former Blackburn and Brighton striker, who has been living with neurodegenerative disease for the past 17 years.
May says that many of the people in the campaign group can no longer speak and he personally knows of around five former Manchester United players from the late seventies and eighties with dementia.
Dean Windass has also just disclosed his own stage-two diagnosis at the age of 55 and May is aware of others struggling with neurodegenerative disease who played as recently as the Eighties and Nineties. May, who started in Manchester United’s FA Cup final-winning teams of 1996 and 1999, is not calling for heading to be stopped but he does want current players to be fully informed of the risks and for the industry to collectively step forward for its former heroes.
“Its an industrial injury,” says May. “There’s quite a few players involved in the group who played in the 1980s who talk about their ex team-mates – I’m not going to name names – who are struggling with dementia.
“I speak to players now and they say, ‘Have you been tested’. They say, ‘No I don’t want to find out’. People are absolutely scared to death of finding out.
“Three or four nights before the launch all I could think of is, ‘Oh my god, this is what will happen to me’. All I can think if I go in the kitchen and forget something is, ‘Have I got dementia?’ Those thoughts go through your mind.
“I’m 55 this year. I don’t want my kids in 10 years’ time having to look after me, not being able to speak to them and understand them. I would wish they could come once a week, twice a week, see their dad, know that I’m well cared for.”
Beckham was among those who sent a message of support at the launch and, with backing among many others from Gary Lineker, Sir Geoff Hurst, Graeme Souness and the family of Sir Bobby Charlton, the group spans several generations.
May decided to become involved after speaking with John Stiles, the son of 1966 World Cup winner Nobby, who was found to have died from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease associated with head impacts that leads to dementia.
‘I don’t know if players understand the trauma’
May says that players would take aerial blows “all the time” whether from heading, elbows or clashes of heads. “I remember playing for Burnley against Stoke – I got a bang on the head and I can’t even remember who did it,” he says. “You look at the 1980s and 1990s games – it was, ‘get on with it lads’ and that’s what we did. You’d probably get two or three free hits before you got spoken to and you would pass it to your other centre-half. And they would do it back to you. It would be a free-for-all.
“When I look at the amount of times I must have headed a ball in training, before a game, during a game, as a kid, you are talking thousands and thousands. I would do 30-40 headers on a Friday – corners and free-kicks. They say that each heading of a ball whether from a goalkeeper or long free-kick is like getting punched off a professional boxer at 80 per cent.
“I am not saying stop heading in training but there has got to be certain times. I look at current players and I don’t know whether they actually understand the trauma. If I was a 16-year-old now growing up, knowing what I know now about the heading and what it could cause, I would certainly not do as many in training. Absolutely not. I’d probably do half a dozen before a game on a Friday. Matchday? You are there to win a game.”
The FA did introduce guidance in 2021 that recommended no more than 10 “high force” headers in training per week. However, the former Tottenham and current Nottingham Forest manager Nuno Espirito Santo would soon admit that he did not keep count – “we have training sessions without anybody seeing us…maybe I will get myself in trouble for this” – and the general perception is that he was not alone. Asked if he thought that the FA’s heading guidance is routinely enforced inside clubs, May replies: “I would say not a chance.”
The Professional Footballers’ Association set up a brain health team in 2022 to provide support and advice to former players, and it was then announced in September 2023 that an initial £1 million Brain Health fund had been jointly established with the Premier League. A further £1 million has since gone into the pot but, with individual nursing care costs now averaging around £75,000 a year, the limitations are obvious. To put the funding in a wider football context, agents were paid more than £400 million by top-flight clubs in 2023-24.
The FA and the English Football League have not contributed to the fund while what was once the PFA Charity (now called the Players Foundation) – and which still has funds in excess of £55 million – has been subject to an ongoing Charity Commission inquiry since 2020.
May says that the “silence is absolutely deafening” since the Football Families for Justice group launch last month and he would like to hear from the PFA chief executive Maheta Molango on the issue.
The former Manchester United goalkeeper Alex Stepney, who has personally seen the 1968 European Cup Winning-team devastated by dementia, has suggested that football come together to create bespoke care homes in different regions of the country. “It’s a brilliant idea,” says May. “You are in a home with your team-mates, ex footballers…just to trigger things, rather than in a home that you have no idea who you are with. Football right now is awash with money. It’s the best game in the world, it creates thousands of jobs, puts millions and millions into the treasury.
“We collectively have made football what it is today – this unbelievable global game. It needs to be spoken about – that’s why this group has come together. It’s getting bigger. It is not going to go away. Ex-players are disgusted with the stories they are hearing.”
In a clear indication of the scale of the problem, the PFA is currently working with more than 200 families of former players with dementia and, with the Premier League, is urging families in need to get in touch. Applications to the brain health fund are reviewed by an expert panel and can include some care costs as well as other types of support. The PFA also say they have delivered more than 125 education workshops to EFL and WSL players. Brain health education is mandated in the Premier League but delivered separately.
Pallister felt his head was ‘full of seashells’
If there has been one uplifting aspect of this story, it has been the strengthening of old bonds between former players. Gary Pallister, who has spoken of his own fears and how he would suffer migraines, sickness, blurred vision and a feeling that his head was “full of seashells” following matches, is also part of the group. The former United captain Roy Keane has also recently called for further action. May says that it was the spirit which underpinned the incredible success at United when, with Beckham, Pallister and Keane, he was part of one of the greatest teams in British football history.
“It was the togetherness, the looking after each other, the fighting for each other,” he says. “There were no cliques, nobody was selfish. Every training session was so enjoyable, probably harder than playing because it was that physical. It was absolutely fantastic.
“People go on about the [Sir Alex Ferguson] hairdryer – it was never as much as what people perceived. When you look at that team, it was unbelievable characters and unbelievable players. Every single one would run through a brick wall for you. It is still there 20-odd years later.
“When I look at the Football Families for Justice, it’s the same type of bond – the all in it together. Nobody is bigger than anyone else, everyone is on a level playing field, all fighting for the same thing and that is justice.”
