AN EXAMINATION OF THE FREQUENCY AND SEVERITY OF INJURIES AND INCIDENTS AT 3 LEVELS OF PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

Objective-To assess the risk of injury to professional footballers dur ing European international and English Premier and First: Division lea gue matches. Methods-Videotaped recordings of 29, 49, and 93 matches f rom the 1996 European Championship, 1996/1997 English Premier season a nd 1994 to 1997 English First Division seasons respectively were analy sed. During each match, several relevant variables, including the numb er of fouls, injuries,time of incident, player identity, and injury me chanism, were recorded. Results-Significantly more free kicks were awa rded during international matches than during league matches; however, there were no significant differences between the numbers of free kic ks awarded over the three First Division seasons assessed. Between 1.7 and 3.0% of fouls resulted in a player requiring treatment for injury , but only 15-28% of all injuries resulted from foul play. In all ''no n-foul'' situations, in which injury resulted, at least 60% still invo lved player to player contact. No significant differences in injury fr equency were observed between playing positions or match halves. Concl usions-The results equate to a total of 808 players per season from th e estimated 2600 players in the four English professional football lea gues sustaining a match injury that caused them to miss at least one g ame. The large number of underlying ''non-injury'' incidents is identi fied as the reason for this level of injury rather than a higher ratio of ''injury'' to ''non-injury'' incidents in professional football co mpared with other occupations.