Exploring the true burden of a time-loss injury: full vs partial time-loss in elite academy football (soccer)

ABSTRACT

In football, the number of days without full participation in training/competition is often used as a surrogate measure for time-loss (TL) caused by injury. However, injury management and return-to-play processes frequently include modified participation, which to date has only been recorded through self-reports. This study aims to demonstrate the differentiation between ‘full’ (no participation in team football) and ‘partial’ (reduced/modified participation in team football) burden. Injury and exposure data were collected from 118 male elite footballers (U13–U18) over 3 consecutive seasons according to the Football Consensus Statement. TL injury burden was calculated separately as the number of total, ‘full’ and ‘partial’ days lost per 1000 h of exposure. Injury burden (137.2 days lost/1000 h, 95% CI 133.4–141.0) was comprised of 23% (31.9 days lost/1000 h, 95% CI 30.1–33.8) partial TL and 77% (105.3 days lost/1000 h, 95% CI 102.0–108.6) full TL burden. Injuries of moderate severity (8–28 days lost) showed 40% of partial TL. TL injury incidence rate (6.6 injuries/1000 h, 95% CI 5.8–7.5), the number of severe injuries (16%), and the distribution of TL and non-TL injuries (56% and 44%) were comparable to other reports in elite youth footballers. Almost one-quarter of the TL injury burden showed that injured players were still included in some team football activities, which, for injuries with TL >7 days, was likely related to the return to play process. Therefore, reporting on partial TL provides insight into the true impact of injury on participation levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Football
• sports injury
• epidemiology
• adolescence
• prevention

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Sydney FC staff and all players and parents for their contribution to the collection of injury data for this project.

Disclosure statement

SV was the academy physiotherapist at Sydney FC. The authors declare no other conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

Data are available from the authors upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a matching scholarship between Sydney FC and the University of Wollongong (Grant Reference Number: 3408923).