OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of FIFA injury prevention programmes in football (FIFA 11 and FIFA 11+). DESIGN Systematic review and meta-analysis. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR SELECTING STUDIES Randomised controlled trials comparing the FIFA injury prevention programmes with a control (no or sham intervention) among football players. DATA SOURCES MEDLINE via PubMed, EMBASE via OVID, CIN...

In 2009, FIFA promoted and disseminated the FIFA 11+ injury prevention programme worldwide. Developed and studied by the FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-MARC), the programme was based on a randomised controlled study and one countrywide campaign in amateur football that significantly reduced injuries and healthcare costs. Since the FIFA 11+ launch, key publications have confirmed...

537 Br J Sports Med June 2010 Vol 44 No 8 FIFA President Sepp Blatter deserves tremendous credit. Blatter’s leadership has been remarkable for moving health from irrelevance to preeminence in a major sport.2 Blatter and the Chair of the FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-MARC), Professor Jiri Dvorak, supported by Dr Michel D’Hooghe, Chair of FIFA Medical Committee, convened national...

Accurate forecasts are essential in many areas such as business and sports forecasting. Prediction markets are a promising approach for forecasting future events and are increasingly used to aggregate information on particular future events of interest such as elections, sports events, and Oscar winners. In this paper, we present the results of an empirical study that compares the forecast accu...

No studies have analysed the acute effects of the FIFA 11+ and Harmoknee warm-up programmes on major physical performance measures. The aim of this study was to analyse the acute (post-exercise) effects of the FIFA 11+, Harmoknee and dynamic warm-up routines on several physical performance measures in amateur football players. A randomized, crossover and counterbalanced study design was used to...

In 1994 Joseph S Blatter, President of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), asked: “What can medicine and science do to improve the game of football?” Although a simple question, it led to the founding of the FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-MARC) during the 1994 FIFA World Cup USA. The objective of F-MARC was to reduce football injuries at all levels of p...

BACKGROUND FIFA has surveyed match injuries in its tournaments since 1998. AIM To analyse the incidence and characteristics of match injuries incurred during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in comparison to previous FIFA World Cups. METHODS The chief physicians of the participating teams reported all newly incurred injuries of their players after the match on a standardised report form. 124 (97%) f...

The FIFA 11+ is a simple, and easy to implement, sports injury prevention program comprising a warm up of 10 conditioning exercises. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the impact of the FIFA 11+ on injury incidence, compliance and cost effectiveness when implemented among football players. MEDLINE, EMBASE and Scopus databases were searched using the search terms "FIFA 11+", "foot...

In the last decade, injury prevention has received a lot of attention in sports medicine, and recently international sports-governing bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee, declared the protection of the athletes' health as one of their major objectives. In 1994, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) established its Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-...

Recognizing the arbitrary standard FIFA ball is a significant ability for soccer robots to play competition without the constraint of current color-coded environment. This paper describes a novel method to recognize arbitrary FIFA ball based on omni-directional vision system. Firstly the omni-directional vision system and its calibration for distance map are introduced, and the conclusion that ...