ArticleSports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.)2025
The Time Course of Injury Risk After Return-to-Play in Professional Football (Soccer).
Article in Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- No clear association between time to return-to-play and first additional injury in European professional football players after ACL injury: A media-based study.Journal of experimental orthopaedics · 2026Article
- Subsequent Injury Risk After Return-to-Play From Lower-Extremity Muscle Injuries in Professional Male Football (Soccer).Orthopaedic journal of sports medicine · 2026Article
- Return to performance criteria in soccer after musculoskeletal injury: A scoping review.Knee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy : official journal of the ESSKA · 2026Article
- Development and validation of a machine learning model for non-contact injury prediction based on lower limb strength asymmetry in professional football.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The 'vicious circle' of sports injuries: an analysis of 165 athletics (track and field) athletes over a 39-week follow-up using Markov chains.BMJ open sport & exercise medicine · 2025Article
- Injury incidence and patterns in men's UEFA EURO 2024 and CONMEBOL Copa America 2024: descriptive findings from two simultaneously staged tournaments.BMJ open sport & exercise medicine · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundInjury risk in professional football (soccer) is increased in the weeks following return-to-play (RTP). However, the time course of injury risk after RTP (the hazard curve) as well as its influencing factors are largely unknown. This knowledge gap, which is arguably due to the volatility of instantaneous risk when calculated for short time intervals, impedes on informed RTP decision making and post-RTP player management.
objectivesThis study aimed to characterize the hazard curve for non-contact time-loss injuries after RTP in male professional football and to investigate the influence of the severity of the index injury and playing position.
methodsMedia-based injury records from the first German football league were collected over four seasons as previously published. Time-to-event analysis was employed for non-contact time-loss injury after RTP. The Kaplan-Meier survival function was used to calculate the cumulative hazard function, from which the continuous hazard function was retrieved by derivation.
resultsThere were 1623 observed and 1520 censored events from 646 players analyzed. The overall shape of the hazard curve was compatible with an exponential decline of injury risk, from an approximately two-fold level shortly after RTP towards baseline, with a half-time of about 4 weeks. Interestingly, the peak of the hazard curve was slightly delayed for moderate and more clearly for severe index injuries.
conclusionsThe time course of injury risk after RTP (the hazard curve) can be characterized based on the Kaplan-Meier model. The shape of the hazard curve and its influencing factors are of practical as well as methodological relevance and warrant further investigation.
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