How injuries affect rehabilitation workload in a National Team during an elite soccer event? An experience from the...

Many epidemiological studies have been performed in soccer but none of them investigated the incidence of injury in association with the utilization of clinical and rehabilitation services of the medical team. This study aims to examine such correlation in a National football team during the recent 2010 World Cup.

All injuries occurred to the Algerian National Team players during the pre competition stage and the World Cup were recorded, together with the exposure. Moreover, duration and frequency of each consultation performed by doctors, physiotherapists, masseurs and pitch rehabilitator was recorded.

Incidence of injuries was 7.54 per 1000h exposure and six players were injured at the beginning of the stage but all players were available for official matches. Difference in the duration of rehabilitation sessions on the field is present among the players who joined the camp already injured and the players who were not injured at the commencement of the camp (8.83±10.63 vs. 2.00±4.46 hours, P<0.05) while there was no difference in rehabilitation between players that occurred in an injury during after the beginning of the camp and uninjured players.

A medical team composed of two physicians, four physiotherapists, one pitch rehabilitator and two masseurs facilitated us to reasonably distribute this workload with good rehabilitation outcomes based on players' availability during competition. Moreover, the skills of a pitch rehabilitator appear to be useful, most evidently when starting the camp with previously injured athletes. Conversely, injuries occurring during the tournament didn't affect rehabilitation workload significantly.