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Injury risk 'very low' for youngest soccer players

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Injury risk 'very low' for youngest soccer players

Last Updated: 2009-06-23 13:00:42 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Soccer is a very safe sport for the littlest players, Norwegian researchers have found.

Among nearly 2,000 children followed for one season, the researchers detected only four serious injuries among children 12 and younger, while the overall rate of injuries per hours played was also lower for the younger players.

"The current results suggest that organized 5- or 7-a-side soccer for children 12 years or younger is associated with a very low risk of injury," Dr. Anne Froholdt and colleagues from the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences conclude in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

Adult soccer players face a high rate of injury, which appears to be almost as high among players 16 and older, Froholdt and her team report. But information is lacking on how safe the sport is for younger players, they add.

To investigate, the researchers recorded injuries for one season for 1,879 players 6 to 16 years old on 121 teams in two Norwegian communities. During that time, 159 players got hurt, suffering 200 injuries in all.

Boys accounted for about three quarters of the injuries, and had an incidence of 2.2 traumatic injuries for every 1,000 hours they played soccer, compared to 2.0 per 1,000 for girls. Both boys and girls were more likely to get hurt in matches than during practices.

For the older players, the researchers found, injury risk was higher, at 2.6 per 1,000 hours for those 13 to 16 years old, compared to 1.5 per 1,000 for players 6 to 12 years old.

Most injuries were to the lower extremities and were due to player-to-player contact, the researchers found. Patterns of injury were similar for boys and girls, and older and younger children.

The higher injury risk may have something to do with the nature of having more players on a larger field, or it could simply be because that "older players are faster, stronger and bigger, which increases the potential for collisions and tougher player-to-player contact," the researchers write.

"These are important findings, because numerous reports have documented that the injury risk among elite and professional players is very high, and this may dissuade parents from allowing their children to play soccer," Froholdt and her team say. "The results clearly show that efforts to prevent injuries should be focused on older groups playing 11-a-side soccer."

SOURCE: The American Journal of Sports Medicine, June 2009.