NORTHALLERTON, England (AP) \u2014 Repeatedly heading a soccer ball \u201clikely\u201d contributed to the brain injury that was a factor in the death of former Manchester United and Scotland defender Gordon McQueen, a coroner found Monday.<\/p>\n
McQueen died in June 2023 at the age of 70, with the cause of death given as pneumonia after he became frail and bed-bound for months.<\/p>\n
In his narrative conclusions following an inquest, coroner Jon Heath said McQueen died from pneumonia as a consequence of mixed vascular dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated head trauma.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is likely that repetitive head impacts sustained by heading the ball while playing football contributed to the CTE,\u201d the coroner said.<\/p>\n
His daughter, Hayley McQueen, was in court to hear the findings. She gave evidence during the inquest, saying her father had said that \u2019heading a football for all those years probably hasn\u2019t helped\u201d his condition.<\/p>\n
She said her father was relatively injury-free during his career but did suffer some concussions, adding: \u201cThey would just head back out and play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hayley McQueen, a TV presenter, said she hopes the findings of the inquest will lead to change in soccer and \u201cmake sure that this really real, horrible problem isn\u2019t a problem for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
McQueen played 30 games for Scotland between 1974-81, and for Manchester United and Leeds in a 16-year career.<\/p>\n
After retiring as a player, McQueen went into coaching and became a TV pundit.<\/p>\n
After his death, his family donated his brain to professor Willie Stewart, a consultant neuropathologist at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, the inquest heard. <\/p>\n
Stewart has conducted extensive research into brain injuries in soccer and rugby players. He told the inquest he found evidence of CTE and vascular dementia.<\/p>\n
Stewart said the only evidence available was that McQueen\u2019s \u201chigh exposure\u201d to heading a soccer ball contributed to the death and that heading the ball contributed to the CTE.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORTHALLERTON, England (AP) \u2014 Repeatedly heading a soccer ball \u201clikely\u201d contributed to the brain injury that was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-434522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}