Injury Patterns in Academy-Level Male Youth Soccer Players: A 3-Season Prospective Cohort Study

Objective: To report injury epidemiology in youth male academy-level athletes in the United States.

Design: An observational study on injury occurrences and playing time over the 2019 to 2020, 2020 to 2021, and 2021 to 2022 soccer seasons.

Setting: Data collected from a single midwestern soccer academy in the United States in partnership with a tertiary care level I pediatric heath institution.

Patients: All male youth athletes to have enrolled and participated in the developmental academy during any of the 3 studied seasons.

Interventions: None. This was an observational study.

Main outcome measures: Injury rate (incidence per 1000 playing hours), type, location, mechanism (noncontact vs contact), severity, and mode of play (match vs training) in which the injury was sustained.

Results: Overall rate of injury was 3.64 per 1000 h exposure. Injuries of moderate severity (8-28 days of missed playing time) were most common. When stratified by team, injury rates were highest in the U15 (5.15/1000 h) and lowest in the U12 (0.87/1000 h). Most injuries involved muscles of the lower extremities.

Conclusions: Among male youth academy-level soccer athletes in the United States, older players tended to sustain injuries at a higher rate than younger. The lower extremity was the most common injury location, and muscle injuries and most common type. Concussions remain common in this population, accounting for nearly a 10th of all athletic injuries.

Clinical relevance: Injury epidemiology data from this study add to the growing worldwide pool of data from youth, male, academy-level soccer athletes that will augment development of injury prevention interventions.