The question becomes relevant after a new study, involving the most detailed British research ever undertaken into dementia among retired footballers, concluded that the condition may be connected to repeated head impacts caused by collisions and thousands of headers.

The study included post-mortem examinations on six players who had dementia, which reveal that all of them had suffered from a tearing to a brain membrane consistent with chronic, repetitive head impacts from playing football.

UEFA has now commissioned a research project that will examine the links between dementia and playing football. If the results are conclusive there is little question that FIFA will have to undertake a similar investigation globally.

It is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility that the options are either equipping players with padded head protectors similar to the one already worn by the Arsenal and former Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech following a head injury - albeit not from heading the ball but a collision.

Instead, could a ban be imposed on headers, as already enforced among schoolboys in the United States?

You can be sure that the UK will come under pressure to comply, such is the burgeoning influence of the "elf 'n' safety" PC brigade who seem to have the ear of politicians and sports administrators these days, even managing to persuade teachers to ban kids from playing conkers in school playgrounds.

But dementia has to be taken very serious indeed. Among those calling for action is the daughter of former West Bromwich Albion and England legend Jeff Astle, a centre forward who was a prolific header of the ball.

Dawn Astle says it is time to "stop pushing the issue under the carpet" as she claims the Football Association has done since her dad died in 2002, aged 59, suffering from early on-set dementia. A coroner found this was caused by heading heavy footballs and gave the cause of death as an industrial disease.

A subsequent re-examination of Astle’s brain found he was suffering from the neuro-degenerative brain disease Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).

CTE can only be established following death and it has also been found in deceased American footballers, boxers and rugby players.

These latest results provide a platform for a "pressing research question" on whether dementia is more common in footballers than the general population, Dr Helen Ling, lead author of the UCL Queen Square Brain Bank study, said.

The Astle family have campaigned for the English Football Association to recognise the impact of heading footballs and take action to protect players since the death of the former striker.

Dawn Astle said: "We know what happened to Dad and the evidence is mounting and mounting. What we need is for football to do something.

"This isn’t a broken leg, these former players are dying. They have to take responsibility. It is too late for older players, it is about today’s players and the footballers of the future.

"At the coroner's inquest, football tried to sweep his death under a carpet. They didn't want to know, they didn't want to think that football could be a killer and sadly, it is. It can be.

"By the end he didn't even know he'd ever been a footballer. Everything football ever gave him, football had taken away."

The brains of six of the 14 retired players involved in the research underwent post-mortem examinations and four were found to have CTE pathology, while all six had signs of Alzheimer's disease.

Can it be mere coincidence that three members of England's 1966 World Cup winning squad - Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles and Ray Wilson - are now suffering from Alzheimer's in their seventies while a fourth, centre-half Jack Charlton, has incurred severe memory loss.

The England manager Sir Alf Ramsey, who played for Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur as a full back, was also a dementia victim when he died in 2009.

Ironically, Ramsey was not himself a great advocate of heading the ball, believing it should be kept on the ground if at all possible. "Football is what it says it is," he once remarked. "It should be played with the feet, not with the hips, the head or the backside."

Another of his 1966 squad, George Cohen, who has not been diagnosed with dementia, has now offered to donate his brain for medical research after his death.

Ex-Scottish star Ian St John, who played for Liverpool between 1961 and 1971, says six of his teammates - from a group of about 16 players - now have Alzheimer's.

"I don't know why the FA and the PFA (Professional Footballers’ Association) have covered this up for years," he said.

UEFA's project follows similar initiatives in other sports.

In September, American football's National Football League announced it would spend $100 million (£80 million/€95 million) on medical and engineering research to increase protection after agreeing a $1 billion (£802 million/€947 million) settlement to compensate ex-players who had suffered brain injuries.

A UK study is already examining the long-term health effects of playing rugby, including the effects of suffering frequent concussion.

What is not known is whether the cases of dementia so far revealed are confined to players of the generation which used a leather ball much heavier than today’s models.

It is also rather ironic that boxing, where brain damage is said to be most prevalent, does not employ headguards in professional bouts and is now abandoning them in the Olympics and other international tournaments including those for women, citing evidence that they do not prevent eye or other head injuries.

But there seems no doubt that football has a case to answer. If it is eventually proved that consistent heading of the ball is a definite cause of dementia then could we see the game joining gridiron, baseball, ice hockey, taekwondo, rugby, motor sports, winter sports, horse racing and even cricket where the use of helmets or other forms of reinforced head and facial protection is either obligatory or highly encouraged?

Or will heading the ball simply be kicked into touch?

In such circumstances either solution would be a no-brainer.