Legendary Leicester City forward Gary Lineker once expressed that his greatest health fear is developing dementia.
The Match of the Day icon, who has been open about his health worries over the years, is set to leave the BBC's Premier League highlights programme this summer. Following a prostate cancer scare in 2020, Lineker ensures he undergoes regular health checks.
He's also had to give up golf due to arthritis. Yet it was during his footballing career that he began to fear for his health, particularly his brain, and he would often avoid heading drills in training out of concern.
His fears predate widespread awareness of the link between football and dementia. Studies, including one from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, have found that ex-footballers are 50% more likely to suffer from dementia than the general population.
In a 2022 interview with The Sun, Lineker said: "Any footballer should be apprehensive [about headers] and I don't mind admitting that I am. I headed the ball a lot as a kid – and when I was 20, 21, I made a conscious decision not to do it in training.
"We'd get wet, heavy balls in the winter months – we didn't get new balls every week like they do now – and it was something I was concerned about, as I was a player who scored a lot of headers."
Lineker used his head to score 32 of his 331 career goals. In 2022, he said: "I'll have my triannual test this summer and ask if there's anything they can establish around the brain, because I don't see how, given the circumstances, any footballer wouldn't be worried about it. It's a worry. I don't mind admitting that it concerns me. There's no question there's a link.
"I've had conversations with Alan Shearer and Ian Wright and others about the worry that, come 10, 15 years, that it [dementia] might happen to one of us. The odds suggest that it probably will."
Many high-profile footballers have lost their lives as a result of brain diseases, including 1966 World Cup hero Nobby Stiles, who died of dementia at the age of 78. Parkinson's disease has also troubled Lineker's family after his grandad, who was also a football player, died from the condition.
"My grandfather was in the army but a very good footballer, too," Lineker said to the Daily Mail. "He was in his mid-50s when he developed Parkinson's. We didn't think of why at the time."
Dementia and Parkinson's are not the only diseases to have given Lineker some sleepless nights. The former Everton and Tottenham striker once thought he had contracted Aids while playing for the Three Lions in 1988, at a time when the illness was considered a very scary prospect.
Lineker opened up about the ordeal in his 2019 book Behind Closed Doors: Life, Laughs and Football. "I started to notice something was wrong during the European Championships in the summer of 1988," he said (via Surrey Live).
"In our second game we played... I felt considerably more ill – heavy-limbed and aching. There didn't seem to be any explanation for it. I was also losing weight – about a stone and a half, it would eventually emerge. I quietly wondered if I had Aids. I managed to frighten myself with the thought."
