OBJECTIVE To assess cardiac dimensions in elite Saudi soccer players, and to correlate these measurements with maximal oxygen uptake. METHODS Twenty-three soccer players representing the Saudi National soccer team, and 19 untrained males participated in this study. Cardiac dimensions were measured by M-mode echocardiography, and maximal oxygen uptake was assessed by open-circuit spirometry du...

Recently, many meta-heuristic algorithms are proposed for optimization of various problems. Some of them originally are presented for continuous optimization problems and some others are just applicable for discrete ones. In the literature, sizing optimization of truss structures is one of the discrete optimization problems which is solved by many meta-heuristic algorithms. In this paper, in or...

Relative age effects (RAEs) refer to age differences in the same selection year. In this study, 6,229 female soccer players representing the entire Swiss female soccer population were evaluated to determine the prevalence of RAEs in Swiss women’s soccer. Significant RAEs existed in the self-selected extracurricular (n = 2987) soccer teams and the subgroup of talent development teams (n = 450) i...

The EA Sports Player Performance Index is a rating system for soccer players used in the top two tiers of soccer in England—the Premier League and the Championship. Its development was a collaboration among professional soccer leagues, a news media association, and academia. In this paper, we describe the index and its construction. The novelty of the index lies in its attempts to rate all play...

Exercise training may increase production of free radicals and reactive oxygen species in different ways. The training type and intensity may influence free radicals production, which leads to differences in oxidative stress status between athletes, but the results of the previous studies are incosistent. The aim of our study was to estimate oxidative stress status in elite athletes engaged in ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the social, economic and health aspects related to former professional soccer players in Brazil. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study with the participation of 100 male Brazilian former professional soccer players. For characterization of the sample variables such as age, current and past weight, height, BMI (Body Mass Index) and player position were evaluated. In al...

BACKGROUND Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is predominant in young male athletes, but not much is known about gait differences in cases of increased hip alpha angles. In our study, the hip alpha angle of Nötzli of soccer players was quantified on the basis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with axial oblique sequences. The aim of the current study was to compare the rearfoot motion and pla...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of static, dynamic, and the combination of static and dynamic stretching within a pre-exercise warm-up on the Illinois agility test (IAT) in soccer players. Nineteen professional soccer players (age = 22.5 ± 2.5 years, height = 1.79 ± 0.003 m, body mass = 74.8 ± 10.9 kg) were tested for agility performance using the IAT after different warm-u...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to describe professional soccer players' perceptions towards injuries, physical recovery and the effect of surface related factors on injury resulting from soccer participation on 3rd generation artificial turf (FT) compared to natural grass (NG). METHODS Information was collected through a questionnaire that was completed by 99 professional soccer pla...