Football Injuries: a Survey of Injuries of Iraqi National League Male Players during the 2021-2022 Season

Abstract

Objective: The current article aims at recording the falling , and severity of wounds among the male players of premier Soccer League players in Iraq in the season of 2021–2022 .

Background: Men's football largely prevailed over in the last decades. Based on (FIFA), there have been considerably 265 million women and men soccer of all ages worldwide. Several studies on European professionals and elite players showed increasing level of wounds incidence during games and a very high accidents in ankle, knee, and thigh injuries. There are insufficient studies of injury incidence among soccer players in Iraq. We followed the Iraqi male premier soccer League players during the 2021–2022 season to assess the wounds accidents and types of wounds.

Method: Ten top clubs (235 players (age, 22.4 +/- 5.0 years) from the south and middle of the Iraq national league have been adhered prospectively throughout 2021-2022 and a player exposure and temporal – lost wounds including details  about injuries (kind , body part, duration and circumstances of occurrence) were recorded from medical staff during all club training sessions and matches. A typical medical questionnaire has been employed to assort the injury in respect to type, intensity , site , and injury mechanism.

Results: about 416 injuries were recorded. (274 injuries in matches and 142 in training). We piut down baseline data, match and training exposure, and injury data as type of injury, location, and injury intensity y. The players' mean age was 24 years (range 19-35). The average (SD) injury incidence has been 8.80 injuries per 1000 hours. The wounds incidents during the match has been higher than in training, 18.65 injuries per 1000 match hours and 4.35 injuries per 1000 training hours. Most injuries (95%) were located at the lower extremities, and most of the recorded injuries were acute (73%). Most acute injuries (26.92%) were caused by player contact while 59.13 % were noncontact. The thigh muscle strain (posterior), ankle sprain, and knee were the known sites of injury (30.28%) (21.87%) (14.90%). The national team faced huge risks of injuries more than the rest of the players. The incident events of match wounds indicated a soaring injury tendency across time in both the first and second halves (p<0.0001). There were 93 slight injuries, 104 minor injuries, 168 moderate injuries and 51 major injuries. Re-injuries formed 34% of all injuries, and they resulted longer absences than non-re-injuries (27 vs 20 days. Thigh muscle strain suffered from the greatest consequences in respect to days of absence from football player (on average, 45 days). There have been not differences among the non- similar positions on the field.

Conclusions: The incidence of injuries among male soccer football players in Iraq was high. especially during matches. Most injuries were thigh muscle strain and sprains involving the ankle, and knee injury. Thigh muscle strain was the main reason of absence in matches owing to injury.

An important finding of this investigation was the frequent occurrence of thigh muscle strain and ankle sprain injuries. This high number of these injuries must be treated to consider either this results from playing on artificial turf, insufficient rehabilitation routines resulting in re-injuries, or some other reasons like skill level and physiological/ psychological factors.

The high number of thigh muscle strain, ankle, and knee -injuries in these reports is worried and requires a special focus in the future, such as adequately enforcing rules, and continuing education in techniques and skills focusing on fair play. Future studies are required to determine risk reasons for injury and directing injury prevention initiatives.