Coroner rules repeated heading caused Nobby Stiles' fatal brain condition

A coroner has ruled that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) caused by repeatedly heading a football contributed to the death of Nobby Stiles, the 1966 World Cup winner and former Manchester United midfielder who died in October 2020 aged 78. The finding was delivered at Stockport Coroner’s Court during an inquest into Stiles’s death.

Neuro-pathology expert Dr Daniel Du Plessis told the court that Stiles had headed a football approximately 140,000 times during his career and that this had directly caused his CTE. “I’m quite convinced his heading the football that many times has caused his CTE,” Dr Du Plessis said. Senior coroner Alison Mutch asked him to confirm that repeated heading was the cause, to which he replied simply: “Yes.”

Stiles’s severe dementia was found to be the result of both Alzheimer’s disease and CTE, a condition associated with repeated head trauma. Born in Manchester in 1942, Stiles was a tough-tackling defensive midfielder who earned 28 England caps and made nearly 400 appearances for Manchester United before his retirement.

The inquest itself came about only after Stiles’s family provided information to the coroner’s office. Area coroner Chris Morris noted that, “for reasons not entirely clear to me”, Stiles’s death had not been reported to the coroner at the time it occurred in 2020.

Stiles’s son John, who heads the Football Families for Justice (FFJ) campaign group, has been a prominent voice calling on football authorities to better support former players. The family was previously forced to sell Stiles’s World Cup winner’s medals to fund his dementia care.

John Stiles is among dozens of former footballers and their families suing the Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the English Football League, alleging the bodies were “negligent and in breach of their duty of care” to players. Lawyers representing the claimants have argued that football’s governing bodies knew, or should have known, for decades that repeatedly heading a ball in training and matches was likely to cause brain injuries.