SPORTS MEDICINE
Football injuries during European Championships 2004–2005
Markus Walde
´
n Æ Martin Ha
¨
gglund Æ
Jan Ekstrand
Received: 9 October 2006 / Accepted: 9 January 2007 / Published online: 21 March 2007
Ó
Springer-Verlag 2007
Abstract The risk of injury in football is high, but few
studies have compared men’s and women’s football inju-
ries. The purpose of this prospective study was to analyse
the exposure and injury characteristics of European
Championships in football and to compare data for men,
women and male youth players. The national teams of all
32 countries (672 players) that qualified to the men’s
European Championship 2004, the women’s European
Championship 2005 and the men’s Under-19 European
Championship 2005 were studied. Individual training and
match exposure was documented during the tournaments as
well as time loss injuries. The overall injury incidence was
14 times higher during match play than during training
(34.6 vs. 2.4 injuries per 1000 h, P < 0.0001). There were
no differences in match and training injury incidences
between the championships. Teams eliminated in the
women’s championship had a significantly higher match
injury incidence compared to teams going to the semi-
finals (65.4 vs. 5.0 injuries per 1000 h, P = 0.02). Non-
contact mechanisms were ascribed for 41% of the match
injuries. One-fifth of all injuries were severe with absence
from play longer than 4 weeks. In conclusion, injury
incidences during the European Championships studied
were very similar and it seems thus that the risk of injury in
international football is at least not higher in women than
in men. The teams eliminated in the women’s champion-
ship had a significantly higher match injury incidence than
the teams going to the final stage. Finally, the high fre-
quency of non-contact injury is worrying from a prevention
perspective and should be addressed in future studies.
Keywords Athletic injuries Á Epidemiology Á Football Á
Incidence
Introduction
The overall injury level of professional footballers has been
shown to be high, approximately 1,000 times that of
common industrial occupations generally regarded as high
risk [4]. The Federation of International Football Associ-
ations (FIFA) and the Union of European Football Asso-
ciations (UEFA) amongst others are concerned about the
risk profile and injury characteristics of the sport. For
example, a methodological consensus statement from rep-
resentatives of the major football research groups in the
world was recently published [9].
Although injury characteristics of international cham-
pionship matches are well described [16–18], little is
known about training injuries in this environment. An-
other dilemma in the football literature is that studies
comparing men’s and women’s football injuries are few.
The studies conducted in this field have, however, found
a similar or a lower incidence of injury in women’s
professional or international football compared to men’s
[10, 17, 18, 20]. Even if the overall risk of injury is not
M. Walde
´
n Á M. Ha
¨
gglund Á J. Ekstrand
The Department of Health and Society,
Linko
¨
ping University, Linko
¨
ping, Sweden
J. Ekstrand
The Medical Committee of UEFA,
Nyon, Switzerland
M. Walde
´
n(&)
Department of Orthopaedics,
Ha
¨
ssleholm-Kristianstad Hospitals, Box 351,
281 25 Ha
¨
ssleholm, Sweden
e-mail: markus.walden@telia.com
123
Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc (2007) 15:1155–1162
DOI 10.1007/s00167-007-0290-3