Most Common Soccer Injuries

Soccer season is upon us! In the professional ranks, MLS is cruising through their summer schedule while smaller European leagues have started playing matches. The top European teams are only a couple weeks away from kicking off their first matches as well, and that means that high school, youth, and college soccer are right around the corner too. As teams start preseason and gear up for their regular season schedule, trying to increase injury prevention rates as much as humanly possible is forefront for athletic trainers, physical therapists, strength coaches, and hopefully coaches/technical staff as well.

            While there is a lot of gray area on how good we are at ‘preventing’ injuries from occurring in the first place, the first step in trying to solve a problem is always identifying that problem. This article is designed to arm you with the information to try and keep yourself or your players on the pitch as much as possible.

            Starting in 2001, Ekstrand and colleagues began collecting injury data and time lost due to those injuries across Europe. Notably, the study authors mentioned England, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark but collected data from 116 teams total in 24 countries over 16 years(1). Most of the reported injuries were mild, but the 31 most common injuries were found to occur 78% of the time while the 6 most common injuries caused more than 50% of all time lost(1). Due to these statistics and in the interest of keeping this informative but relatively short, we will focus on these 6 injuries for now. Below is a table showing the percentage of these injuries and the average time missed. Keep in mind, these numbers are for initial injuries and don’t take into account re-injury of the same tissue or body part, which would likely prolong the time off the pitch recovering and rehabbing.

Injury	Percentage of Total Injuries	Average Days Missed
Hamstring muscle injury (structural)	13.8	18.0
Groin (Adductor) Pain	8.8	13.5
Ankle lateral ligament injury	6.3	14.9
Quadriceps muscle injury (structural)	4.6	19.5
Calf muscle injury (structural)	4.1	17.4
Knee medial collateral ligament injury	3.8	24.6

All data from “Time before return to play for the most common injuries in professional football: a 16-year follow-up of the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study” by Ekstrand, et. al 2020(1)

A few key takeaways or explanations from the study itself and especially this data:

1. All of these injuries were ‘moderate’ injuries that generally kept players out 7-28 days.

2. A structural injury (versus a functional injury in the paper) is an acute, indirect injury with macroscopic (MRI/ultrasound) evidence of muscle tear(2).

3. These are not necessarily the injuries with the highest rate of re-injury, but it is still important to rehab appropriately and allow your body time to heal.

There are a couple of caveats when we look at this study and try to generalize it to all soccer players out there.

 1.     These were male, professional football players who not only are highly trained to begin with, but likely had the best recovery options at their disposal.

2.     Younger individuals and females may experience different rates of these injuries due to normal differences we see anatomically and physiologically.

3.     When discussing professional sports and return from injury, there is always the business variable to consider.

So when we look at these common injuries, we see 4 muscle and 2 ligament injuries. There are many techniques we can use to build the resilience of these tissues as athletes, with good baseline strength being high on my list. A good comprehensive offseason and preseason program is essential to staying on the pitch all season long. As you move closer to preseason and then the season, keep an eye on the Legacy Instagram for some of my favorite exercises to try and decrease the likelihood of sustaining one of these injuries – and good luck this season!

1.     Ekstrand J, Krutsch W, Spreco A, et al. Time before return to play for the most common injuries in professional football: a 16-year follow-up of the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2020; 54:421-426.

 2.     Mueller-Wohlfahrt H, Haensel L, Mithoefer K, et al. Terminology and classification of muscle injuries in sport: The Munich consensus statement. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2013; 47:342-350.