ArticleFrontiers in public health2026
Soccer health, performance, and injury prevention in highly trained youth soccer players: a public health approach.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: The transition from youth academy participation to elite senior professional soccer is marred by physical volatility, non-linear development, and elevated injury risk, placing the long-term well-being of young athletes at the intersection of sports science and public health. Traditional chronological age group categorization exacerbates selection bias through the Relative Age Effect (RAE) and often fails to safeguard growing athletes from workload-induced injuries. Objective: This study aims to evaluate a multi-center, maturation-indexed public health intervention protocol designed to optimize athletic output, balance internal/external training loads, and systematically reduce non-contact lower-limb injuries in professional academy soccer players across early- to post-pubertal sub-groups (U13-U16). Methods: This protocol outlines a 24-week cluster-randomized controlled trial. A cohort of 240 elite male youth soccer players [categorized as Tier 3: Highly Trained/National Level per (1) aged 12-16 years] will be recruited from professional football academies (K = 4, Discussion: By treating elite youth soccer player development through a preventive public health lens, this trial will provide scalable evidence regarding the efficacy of biological maturation models. Aligning training load with physiological readiness aims to mitigate systemic youth injuries, reduce elite talent drop-out rates, and update international academy guidelines.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.