The Football Association is set to take the groundbreaking decision to instruct coaches to stop young children from heading the ball in training.

Detailed proposals have been drawn up which cover age groups all the way up to Under-18s and Telegraph Sport understands that coaches and teachers will be told that children from Under-sevens until Under-12s should no longer be practising heading in training.

There would then be a phased introduction once children reach around secondary school age but limitations on both the frequency of heading and the weight of footballs will be recommended right up until the age of 18. The move will not include matches, but the FA and their Scottish counterparts are set to become the first European nations to take action to proactively restrict children from heading the ball.

It follows research last October by the University of Glasgow which showed that former professional football players are 3.5 times more likely to die of brain disease; and specifically five times more likely to die of Alzheimer’s, four times more likely to die of motor neurone disease and twice as likely to die of Parkinson’s.

The research follows Telegraph Sport’s successful campaign for answers into the link between football and dementia and calls both from neuropathologists and campaigners for immediate precautions in children’s football.

Together with other families who have been affected by dementia in football, The Jeff Astle Foundation have now also made a submission to the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council in which they have asked for neurodegenerative disease in football to be formally recognised as an industrial illness.

Telegraph Sport reported in December that the FA had launched a research taskforce that will review potential changes to the coaching and training of heading in England in order “to decrease the overall exposure to headers”.

This has explored prescribed limits on heading in training across the various levels of football and, although the new proposals have not yet been approved, confirmation is likely by the end of the month. The FA regard this as an evolution of their ‘age appropriate coaching guidance’ which actually does already recommend limits on heading for the youngest children. Banning heading in actual younger children’s matches remains unlikely following research which showed that it is a very rare occurrence.

The priority, then, is to educate coaches and parents who might think it is appropriate to introduce repetitive heading with the youngest children or initiate prolonged heading sessions in training.

The Jeff Astle Foundation met on Wednesday with FA chairman Greg Clarke to discuss the proposals and later issued a short statement. Dawn Astle, Jeff’s daughter, confirmed that her family had “heard that there will be new guidelines introduced that will make the game we all love safer” and added that there was “more to do” but that it was “a real step in the right direction”.