Soccer players' injuries at Different Levels of the sport

Soccer players are injury prone, and increasing competition - especially at the highest level - leadsto increasing training loads, and these may contribute to more injuries to players. Hence, the aim is to increasepreventive measures and treatment in this field.Aim: The paper examines soccer players’ susceptibility to injuries occurring at different levels of the sport’s development,and describes the accompanying conditions.Materials and Methods: The study involved 215 players of different levels, of which 105 came from the II andIII league clubs (group I) and 110 from IV league clubs (group II ). The conducted research was based on a diagnosticsurvey using an anonymous questionnaire containing 15 questions developed by the authors.Results: Similar traumas (injuries) were observed among respondents of both groups. Group I had suffered injuriesin the case of 92 (87.62%) respondents, while Group II contained 87 (79.09%) subjects who had sufferedinjuries. Group I trained harder than Group II , but the nature of the injuries was similar for all the players. Thesurveyed Group I had 100% access to physio-therapeutic help; in Group II this was the case for only 48 (43.64%)subjects. Group I also applied preventive anti-injury measures to a greater extent than Group II , in the form ofpre-training warm-ups and post-training stretching and loosening.Conclusions: Among the more advanced soccer players there was a trend toward more traumas with similarkinds of sustained injuries, despite the greater availability of physiotherapy care and their use of more antiinjuryprevention techniques than in the group representing the lower levels of sport advancement in soccer. Thisadverse effect is associated with the more intense training and training loads of the more advanced players