title: Muscle strains in soccer: a five-year survey of an Italian major league team.
abstract: We analyzed muscle injuries collected from an Italian major-league soccer team during the period 1995-2000. We considered all the muscle accidents that had required a player to stand down for three or more days. Among the overall injuries, muscle accidents were the most frequent, representing 30% (103 cases), followed by contusions (28%), sprains (17%) and tendinopathies (9%). There was one recurrence involving the hamstring. Lack of training was one of the causes of such injuries; in fact the training/match ratio of those seasons (3.6 to 1) show that there was little time for training compared to the number of matches.
authors.affiliation: Sports Traumatology and Arthroscopic Surgery Unit, Galeazzi Orthopedics Institute, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Piero
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Volpi
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Melegati
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tornese
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bandi
mesh_terms: D001265:Athletic Injuries / Q000150:complications*; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D009132:Muscles / Q000293:injuries*; D012916:Soccer / Q000293:injuries*; D013180:Sprains and Strains / Q000209:etiology*