Soccer - preventing knee injury

Most of the world’s football is played at amateur and community level, where there is often little professional attention paid to muscle balance, power and conditioning. The majority of soccer injuries are to the lower limb, especially the knee and ankle. Most knee injuries occur in young people - eighty-five percent of injuries occur in players under 23 and half of these affect children under 15. So over 40% of soccer knee injuries occur in children under 15!

Women soccer players, too, are at particular risk, with an injury rate twice that of men.

Sometimes injury can be serious and sports trainers need to concentrate on the factors which increase risk:

• Conditioning, especially pre-season - a footballer’s knees are at greatest risk towards the end of a match, when the muscles are fatiguing.
• Warm ups
• Supervised repetitive jump landing training especially for female players
• Attention to muscle strength and balance training
• Protective equipment especially shin guards, and adequate footware
• Attention to the ground cover. Indoor surfaces are associated with a higher incidence of injury than turf
• Proper supervision to reduce foul play and adopting modified rules for children.
• Using only plastic-coated balls to optimise water resistance, and choosing the appropriate sized ball for age.