Injuries in adolescent female players in European football: a prospective study over one outdoor soccer season

Abstract

In this prospective study, injuries in 153 adolescent female soccer players were recorded during one outdoor season (April-October). The overall injury incidence rate was 6.8 per 1000 h soccer (games and practice) and the incidence rate of traumatic injury 9.1 and 1.5 per 1000 player-hours in games and practice, respectively. Sixty-three players (41%) sustained 79 injuries. Sixty-six percent of the injuries were traumatic and 34% were overuse injuries. Most of the traumatic injuries occurred during games. Eighty-nine percent of the injuries were located in the lower extremities and 42% occurred in the knee or ankle. The most frequent type of injury was ankle sprain (22.8%). Forty-one percent of the traumatic injuries and 56% of the ankle sprains were re-injuries. Most of the injuries were of moderate severity (52%), while 34% were minor and 14% were major. Most of the major injuries were traumatic such as knee ligament injuries and ankle sprains.

Prevalência de lesões em atletas do futsal feminino brasileiro: um estudo retrospectivo

“…Regarding the mostly injured sites, there was predominance of ankle injuries, which also corroborated other studies already conduced in the women's soccer and men's futsal [4][5][6]11,14,[18][19][20]23 . The high incidence of knee injuries is not something new, since the high prevalence of injuries on that site was also found in the literature in general 6,11,14,15,17,19,20 . The high number of muscle injuries on the thigh was surprising though and its frequency was similar to the number of injuries on the ankle and knee.…”

“…In other investigations, the number of injuries reached a higher percentage 15,18,19 . The European women's soccer, investigated during a season, presented lower incidence of injuries corresponding to 41% of the sample 20 . The lower limbs were the mostly injured, totalizing 86.5% of all injuries, corroborating the findings in the literature concerning the high prevalence of injuries in these segments, in soccer and futsal 6,15,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] .…”

Applied Physiology of Female Soccer: An Update

“…Longitudinal injury patterns in female soccer are of interest to assess if soft tissue injuries are becoming more frequent as the intensity of the female game increases or if the increased Soccer injuries predominately affect the ankle, knee and muscles of the thigh and calf [101]. Injuries to the hip and groin are less common in female players [98,103,106,109,110] [75,98,99,115,116]. The large body of evidence is in part due to the financial and emotional cost of an ACL as well as the potential impact upon the team [117].…”

“…A link has been established between hypermobile individuals and higher risk of ACL injuries in female soccer and basketball players [122]. A greater quadriceps angle (Q-angle) has been linked to increased injury risk in female basketball players [123] but this has not been replicated in elite female soccer players [110]. Whilst it is important to recognise these anatomical factors they should not be focussed upon as they cannot be addressed via training interventions [74].…”

“…Injuries to the hip and groin are less common in female players [98,103,106,109,110] than males [111,112] and this is attributed to the abdominal wall deficiency apparent in males [113]. Knee injuries are more frequent in females than males [114], with the knee [98,107] and ankle [110] often being cited as the most common injury sites in females. Incidences of ankle injuries have been shown as similar between elite males and females during a competitive season in the Swedish Premier League [114].…”