YOUTH NATIONAL ITALIAN SOCCER TEAM INJURY STUDY: A PRELIMINARY SURVEY

In recent decades, football had an important change in all its aspects: there was an increased intensity and frequency of training sessions and matches. In particular stress to which the athletes must be submitted has changed. This has led to an apparent increase in the incidence of injuries. The overall injury level of professional footballers has been shown to be high, approximately 1,000 times than of common industrial occupations generally regarded as high risk. The Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) and the union of European Football Associations (uEFA) are concerned about the risk profile and injury characteristics of the sport. In 1999, uefa started a research project with the aim to decrease the number of injuries and increase occupational safety for professional footballers. FIgC, Italian Football Federation, has started in January 2011 a Sports injury survey system regarding all male and female youth teams, according to uEFA injury study model. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the injuries of the Italian national youth teams over one season. The affected anatomic sites, incidence rate, and type and severity of injuries are analyzed. All this data could help us to facilitate the development of management strategies in health, especially in the field of preventive medicine. This study describes the injuries of the Italian national male and female youth teams during friendly, official and tournament matches and training camps during one season, for a total of 2 female teams (under 17 e under 19), and 6 male teams (under 16, under 17, under 18 under 19, under 21). only male teams under 17, 19, 21 and female 17, 19 had official competitions, while the remaining had only friendly matches and training sessions. Two hundred ninety-one athletes of Italian national youth teams were studied during training, friendly matches and official matches. The following data were collected using a special form of evaluation: number of players, exposure training, exposure match, total number of injuries, total number of injuries during matches, total number of injuries during training. The registration of the injuries was based on a clinical examination by the team physician and according to the uEFA model. Exposure was documented individually in minutes and expressed as the number of playing hours. Injury incidence is expressed as the mean number of injuries per 1,000 h of exposure.