Nine typical injury patterns in German professional male football (soccer): a systematic visual video analysis of 345 match injuries

Abstract

AimWe aimed to systematically analyse the videos of acute injuries in professional men’s football and describe typical injury patterns.MethodsInjuries were registered with the German statutory accident insurance for professional athletes as part of occupational accident reporting. Following each season (2014–2017), video footage of the two highest divisions in German male football was searched for moderate and severe acute match injuries. Two raters then independently assessed the injuries for: game situation, player and opponent behaviour, referee decision, and injury mechanisms.ResultsThe total data set included 7493 acute injuries. Of these, 857 (11%) were moderate or severe match injuries. The video search yielded 345 (40%) clearly identifiable injuries and of those 170 (49%) were contact injuries. We describe nine typical injury patterns: one each for head and shoulder injuries, two for thigh and ankle, and three for knee injuries. The nine patterns are called: (1) Head-to-head injury. (2) Collision-and-fall shoulder injury. (3) Sprinter’s thigh injury. (4) Perturbation-and-strain thigh injury. (5) Tackle knee injury. (6) Tackle-and-twist knee injury. (7) Non-contact knee injury. (8) Attacked ankle injury. (9) Collision-and-twist ankle injury. Thigh injuries occurred primarily in non-contact situations (44/81), mostly while the player was sprinting (23/44). Knee injuries were often caused by direct external impact (49/84)—mainly suffered by the tackler during a tackle (17/49).ConclusionThe nine common injury patterns in football differed substantially in their mechanisms and causes.

Collision with opponents—but not foul play—dominates injury mechanism in professional men’s basketball

“…In our study, head injuries occurred after a hit or push by an opponent, mainly through direct elbow-to-head collisions. Our findings extend findings from other team ball sports regarding a major number of contact mechanisms in moderate and severe head injuries [ 5 , 6 , 17 – 19 ].…”

“…This study included all male basketball players of the first and second national league in Germany who had played in at least one match in the above seasons. Injuries and contact mechanisms were defined by video match analysis in team ball sports as described previously [ 5 , 6 ]. Inclusion and exclusion criteria, procedure of video production, provision of video footage, data collection, video analysis, and the concordance of referee decisions with the analyses of an expert video rater were identical to those described in previous literature reports [ 5 , 6 ].…”

“…The observation form, which was specifically designed for basketball, followed the latest versions of already established surveillance forms in other team ball sports [ 5 , 6 ] and contained 25 factors in 5-item groups (Table 1 ). In a pilot test of this version, 9 selected injury sequences (3 injuries each to the head, knees, and ankles) were evaluated by 10 naive raters experienced in basketball [ 16 ].…”

“…One expert rater (DS, former professional basketball player and physician) reviewed and classified each incident according to the observation form. A detailed description of the video analysis process is given elsewhere [ 5 , 6 ]. Typical injury patterns were described for each body site.…”

Mitarbeiter im professionellen europäischen Fußball – Vergleich der Personalstruktur in der Sportmedizin, -wissenschaft und Physiotherapie zwischen der Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A und der Premier League

“…Epidemiologische Untersuchungen über den Einfluss von externen Risikofaktoren wie klimatische Bedingungen [3], Platzbeschaffenheit [4] oder Untersuchungen zu Abhängigkeiten von Spielfrequenzen in Pflichtspielen [5] wurden bereits durchgeführt und gaben erste Hinweise auf die zustande kommenden Unterschiede, lieferten aber dennoch keine abschließende Erklärung. Neben diesen untersuchten Faktoren wurde auch der Einfluss von Regelverletzungen im Spielbetrieb auf Verletzungsmuster untersucht und nur ein geringer Einfluss von "Foul-Play" bei einem hohen Anteil an "non-contact"-Verletzungen belegt [6,7]. Auch ein Einfluss der Trainerpersonalie und dem zugrunde liegenden Führungsstil konnte nachgewiesen werden [8].…”