Football is an exciting game – no doubt, the thrill, the suspense and goals are what all football fans and players enjoy to see. However, if they is something they don’t like seeing it has to be the injuries.
Football, like all other sports, has a high risk of injury. One of the reasons for this risk of injuries is that football is a high-impact sport. Tackling, blocking, dribbling and other physical contact between players can result in these common injuries.
Today we’ll look at the most common football or soccer injuries. It will be essential to know this information if you play football and even if are a football fan.
Most Common Football Injuries
1. Anterior Cruciate Ligament and Medial Collateral Ligament Injuries
Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) is a ligament situated deep inside the knee. It’s about 10cm long in length and 1 cm wide. It provides stability and contains nerves, which send information of the knee’s movement to the brain.
ACL injuries are very common injuries among soccer players. It is a horrible injury and can cause the knee to be wobbly and unstable. The anterior cruciate ligament in the knee will be damaged or torn when the knee is impacted from the front or back.
Most football players who get ACL injuries undergo surgery and take about 9 to 11 months to recover. Players like Mikel Arteta, Alessandro Del Piero, Roberto Baggio and Robert Pires are exam of famous players to have suffered from ACL injuries.
Medial Collateral Ligament injuries are also another common type of injury in soccer.
The medial collateral ligament (MCL) is located in the knee. MCL sprain or MCL injury is a tear of the ligament on the inside of the knee. This injury occurs because of twisting or direct impact on the knee, which affects the inside of the knee.
Medial ligament injuries are also very common in contact sports such as American football and rugby.
2. Ankle Sprains and Ankle Injuries
Ankle injuries are one of the most common injury in all sports. This is because the ankles are susceptible to soft tissue damage when pivoting the leg, changing direction while dribbling, or when too much pressure is exerted on the joint. Ankle sprains are also very common in soccer. They can side-line any player from training. Ankle injuries take weeks to heal and to successfully recover from.
3. Torn Meniscus
A torn meniscus is another popular soccer injury.
The medial and lateral menisci (singular: meniscus) are two large C-shaped cartilages that are situated on the top of the tibia bone of the knee. A football player will get torn meniscus because of trauma due to forceful twisting or hyper-flexing of the knee-joint. In layman’s terms, when a player rotates their body while a foot stays rooted in a particular spot, the knee can twist, which causes the meniscus to tear.
This injury takes time to recover from.
4. Hamstring Injury
The hamstrings are tendons or strong bands of tissue that are situated at the back of the thighs and attach the large thigh muscle to the bone. The hamstrings are also referred to as a group of three muscles that run along the back of your thigh, from your hip to just below your knee.
Hamstring injuries can occur if any of the tendons or muscles are stretched beyond their limit when running, kicking, climbing or jumping. Sharp bursts of speed can cause the hamstrings to tear if the player is not conditioned or properly warmed up. Overstretching the hamstrings can also cause hamstring injury.
Hamstring injuries takes few weeks before you recover.
5. Thigh Muscle Strain Injuries
Football is a sport with a lot of kicking, hence thigh muscle strain is a common occurrence. This injury occurs as a result of a tear in the Quadriceps muscle group. The Quadriceps are found at the front of the thigh. The Quadriceps muscle group is responsible for movements that involve extending the knee.
This is a very injury to players that like to run fast and sprint a lot like Gareth Bale. The severity of a thigh muscle strain is dependent on the level of the tear of the muscles fibers.
Recovery from this injury normal takes 6 weeks.
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