How and When to Use an Injury Prevention Intervention in Soccer

Soccer is a high intensity intermittent contact sport exposing elite level players to contin‐ ual physical, technical, tactical, psychological, and physiological demands (Owen et al, 2011; Dellal et al, 2011). Due to the huge financial rewards of being successful at the elite level of the sport, the demands placed upon the players are ever growing because of increased fixture schedules that generally include less recovery periods between train‐ ing and competitive match play, disposing players to a greater risk of injury (Dellal at al, 2013; Dupont et al, 2010; Rey et al, 2010; Morgan and Oberlander 2001; Junge and Dvorak 2004). The number of competitive matches played by elite European soccer play‐ ers (Table 1) during one season can be >80, with 1.6 to 2 matches per week throughout its entirety (excluding friendly games) (Figure 1). It should be noted that, a player com‐ peting at the higher echelons of world soccer such as Lionel Messi has accumulated be‐ tween 64 to 69 official competitive games throughout seasons 2011-2012, 2010-2011, and 2009-2010 as shown in Table 2. As reported in this context, modern day soccer involves a continued, intensive cycle and predisposes players to greater injury risks due to accu‐ mulative fatigue or overload. Previous research has already found a correlation between low training and match availability due to injury, with decreased team success (Arnason et al, 2004). This is of particular importance for teams unable to replace players due to limited funds or resources, and subsequently highlights the need for all clubs irrespec‐ tive of budgets, resources and funding potential to minimize injury risk of players in or‐ der to be more successful. After all, there seems to be no point in pushing players constantly to be physically, technically and tactically better if they are consistently un‐ available to play.