Search

The youth-to-first team phase presents a number of challenges in the careers of modern football players with stagnation, inconsistent performance and dropout being reported. The aim of this study was to investigate the perception of staff involved in professional academy football clubs around the globe, with a particular focus on youth and first team transition demands, resources as well as transitions barriers and coping among male academy football players. Participants from 29 male youth academies distributed across 29 countries took part in the survey. Our main findings suggested training and match intensity reported as being greater at the senior-level and also pressure from parents. The majority of respondents indicated their clubs having long-term strategy for player development and specific roles supporting successful player transitions. Exposure to different playing styles was deemed important to prepare players for the first team. Likewise, having the academy and the first team training on the same site was perceived to ease the transition, with the majority of respondents indicating that players are able to cope with the pressure of first team training and games. Perceptions on whether staff do not have the skills/resources to prepare players for the changes in environment and culture when players move from youth-to-senior level were unclear. Collectively, our study extends previous transition research on youth football academies suggesting the importance of a club-based playing philosophy to prepare players for the first team demands and challenges.

Rapid somatic growth and biological maturity status may affect injury patterns in youth football, yet firm conclusions cannot be drawn from the existing research. We aimed to explore growth velocity, maturity, and age as injury risk factors in 95 academy players (11.9-15.0 years), using anthropometric (height and body mass), maturity (skeletal age), injury, and football exposure data collected prospectively over three seasons (2016/17-2018/19). We compared the relative quality of mixed-effects logistic regression models with growth velocity for 223 growth intervals (average 113 days) included as fixed effects and adjusted for age (chronological or skeletal) plus load (hours/week). Associations were considered practically relevant based on the confidence interval for odds ratios, using thresholds of 0.90 and 1.11 to define small beneficial and harmful effects, respectively. We observed harmful effects of older age on overall (OR: 2.61, 95% CI: 1.15-5.91) and sudden onset (1.98, 1.17-3.37) injury risk. Significant associations (p<0.05) were observed for higher body mass change and greater maturity on sudden onset injuries, and for higher hours/week on gradual onset, bone tissue, and physis injuries. Future studies should include larger samples, monitoring athletes from pre-adolescence through maturation, to enable within-subject analyses and better understand the relationship between growth, maturation, and injuries.

The use of data and analytics in professional football organisations has grown steadily over the last decade. Nevertheless, how and whether these advances in sports analytics address the needs of professional football remain unexplored. Practitioners from national federations qualified for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ and professional football clubs from an international community of practitioners took part in a survey exploring the characteristics of their data analytics infrastructure, their role, and their value for elaborating player monitoring and positional data. Respondents from 29 national federations and 32 professional clubs completed the survey, with response rates of 90.6% and 77.1%, respectively. Summary information highlighted the underemployment of staff with expertise in applied data analytics across organisations. Perceptions regarding analytical capabilities and data governance framework were heterogenous, particularly in the case of national federations. Only a third of national federation respondents (~30%) perceived information on positional data from international sports data analytics providers to be sufficiently clear. The general resourcing limitations, the overall lack of expertise in data analytics methods, and the absence of operational taxonomies for reference performance metrics pose constraints to meaningful knowledge translations from raw data in professional football organisations.

Objective: To examine the abrupt effects of Ramadan onset on actigraphy-based time asleep in male youth Muslim football players. Methods: We adopted a quasi-experimental, interrupted time-series research design and tracked objective time asleep over a minimum of 12 consecutive nights in the two weeks prior to and immediately after Ramadan onset, respectively. Twenty-two, male academy student-athletes (chronological age range: 12.6 to 16.2 years) participated in the study (464 individual observations). Segmented generalized mixed-effects modelling estimated the effects of Ramadan onset on time asleep during the first period of night sleep only. Results: Ramadan onset led to an immediate mean reduction of 89 min (95% confidence interval [CI], 54 to 123 min) in time asleep during the first period of night sleep compared to pre-Ramadan sleep patterns. Model-adjusted estimated marginal means for time asleep were ~ 5.7 h (95%CI, 5.1 to 6.2 h) before and ~ 4.2 h (95%CI, 3.6 to 4.7 h) after Ramadan onset. Night sleep interruptions resulting in two or more fragmented periods accounted for 8% (95%CI, 2 to 21%) to 19% (95%, 11 to 29%) of sleep observations before and after Ramadan onset, respectively. Conclusions: The onset of Ramadan determined an abrupt reduction in time asleep of ~ 1 h 30 min in the first period of a night cycle and contributed to additional problems of heterogeneous sleep fragmentation that can impact optimal school learning and youth athlete performance development processes.

Objectives: To examine the timing and intensity of skeletal maturation of the radius-ulna-short (RUS) bones in elite youth Arab athletes. Methods: We compared SuperImposition by Translation And Rotation (SITAR) models with different spline degrees of freedom and transformation expressions to summarize 492 longitudinal measurements for individual RUS bones scores assessed from 99 male academy student-athletes (chronological age range, 11.4 to 18 years; annual screening range, four to seven visits). Results: The SITAR model with 5 degrees of freedom and untransformed chronological age was superior to the other models. The mean growth curve increased with age and showed a mid-pubertal double-kink at a RUS score of ~600 bone score units (au). The SITAR model revealed a first peak in the skeletal maturation velocity curve of ~206 au·year−1 occurred at ~13.5 years. The mean age at the second and largest peak occurred at 15.1 years (95% confidence interval [CI], 14.9 to 15.3 years), with the respective estimated peak skeletal ossification rate of 334 au·year−1 (95% CI, 290 to 377 au·year−1). The mean age at peak height velocity was 13.5 years (95% CI, 13.3 to 13.7 years), with peak height velocity of 10 cm·year−1 (95% CI, 9.6 to 10.4 cm·year−1). Conclusion: Application of the SITAR method confirmed two peaks in the skeletal maturation velocity curve, with the second and largest rate of ossification occurring at a relatively later timing of ~1.5 years than the height growth spurt. Knowledge of the RUS bones timing and intensity can be important to advance strategies for athlete performance development purposes.

Objectives: To assess measurement agreement between FELS and Tanner-Whitehouse (TW) II skeletal ages in male youth soccer players from the Middle East. Methods: We examined agreement between FELS and TW-II skeletal ages using data collected between- and within-subjects (n = 1057 observations) for 409 male, full-time, academy student-athletes recruited as part of the Qatar Football Association national soccer development programme (chronological age range, 9.8 to 18 years; annual screening range, one to seven visits). The Bland–Altman method for repeated measurements estimated the limits of agreement describing the expected range of differences for 95% of pairs of future FELS and TW-II skeletal ages determined on similar individuals from the reference population. Results: The mean difference for TW-II versus FELS protocols was 0.02 years (95% confidence interval, −0.04 to 0.08 years) with lower and upper limits of agreement ranging from −1.39 years (95% confidence interval, −1.48 to −1.30 years) to 1.43 years (95% confidence interval, 1.34 to 1.52 years). Conclusion: Differences for 95% of pairs of future skeletal ages determined with FELS and TW-II methods in this population could be as high as ~3 years for some people that suggested protocols may not be interchangeable in youth Middle Eastern athletes. Justification of skeletal age protocol selection rests on knowledge of measurement bias and variability of expected growth estimations for rationalized application to a population of interest.

Purpose The muscle perfusion response to postexercise cold-water immersion (CWI) is not well understood. We examined the effects of graded postexercise CWI upon global and regional quadriceps femoris muscle perfusion using positron emission tomography and [15O]H2O. Methods Using a matched-group design, 30 healthy men performed cycle ergometer exercise at 70% VO2peak to a core body temperature of 38°C, followed by either 10 min of CWI at 8°C, 22°C, or seated rest (control). Quadriceps muscle perfusion; thigh and calf cutaneous vascular conductance; intestinal, muscle, and local skin temperatures; thermal comfort; mean arterial pressure; and heart rate were assessed at preexercise, postexercise, and after CWI. Results Global quadriceps perfusion was reduced beyond the predefined minimal clinically relevant threshold (0.75 mL per 100 g·min-1) in 22°C water versus control (difference (95% confidence interval (CI)), -2.5 (-3.9 to -1.1) mL per 100 g·min-1). Clinically relevant decreases in muscle perfusion were observed in the rectus femoris (-2.0 (-3.0 to -1.0) mL per 100 g·min-1) and vastus lateralis (-3.5 (-4.9 to -2.0) mL per 100 g·min-1) in 8°C water, and in the vastus lateralis (-3.3 (-4.8 to -1.9) mL per 100 g·min-1) in 22°C water versus control. The mean effects for vastus intermedius and vastus medialis perfusion were not clinically relevant. Clinically relevant decreases in thigh and calf cutaneous vascular conductance were observed in both cooling conditions. Conclusions The present findings revealed that less noxious CWI (22°C) promoted clinically relevant postexercise decreases in global quadriceps muscle perfusion, whereas noxious cooling (8°C) elicited no effect.

To explore the influence of differences in relative skeletal maturity on performance test outcomes in elite youth soccer players from the Middle East. We integrated skeletal age and performance assessments using mixed-longitudinal data available for 199 outfield players (chronological age range: 11.7 to 17.8 yr) enrolled as academy student-athletes (annual screening range: 1 to 5 visits). Skeletal age was determined as per the Tanner-Whitehouse II (TW-II) protocol. Relative maturity was calculated as the difference (∆) between TW-II skeletal age minus chronological age. Performance test outcomes of interest were 10-m sprinting, 40-m sprinting, countermovement jump (CMJ) height and maximal aerobic speed (MAS). Separate random-effects generalized additive models quantified differences in performance test outcomes by relative skeletal maturity. Estimated differences were deemed practically relevant based on the location of the confidence interval (95%CI) against minimal detectable change values for each performance test outcome. For 40-m sprinting, differences of +0.51 s (95%CI, +0.35 to +0.67 s) and + 0.62 s (95%CI, +0.45 to +0.78 s) were practically relevant for relative maturity status of ∆ = -1.5 yr versus ∆ = +0.5 and ∆ = +1 yr, respectively. For CMJ height, a difference of -8 cm (95%CI, -10 to -5 cm) was practically relevant for ∆ = -1.5 yr versus ∆ = +1 yr relative maturity status comparison. Effects for 10-m sprinting and MAS were unclear. Integration of skeletal age and performance assessments indicated conventional maturity status classification criteria were inconsistent to inform player development processes in our sample. Between-player differences in test performance may depend on a substantial delay in skeletal maturation (∆ ≤ -1.5 yr) and the performance outcome measure.

Hamstring injuries constitute the single largest cause of lost playing time in professional football. While restoring high-speed running ability is paramount for rehabilitation from these injuries, little evidence exists regarding the extent of return to sport running performance after hamstring injury in football. We examined medical and match performance data available from a sample of 38 professional soccer players competing in the Qatar Stars League (N = 1426 observations) to describe high-speed running performance during match-play prior and subsequent to a hamstring strain injury. Multivariable-adjusted random-effects generalized additive models estimated post- versus pre-hamstring injury differences in maximal speed (km/h), high-speed running (>20 km/h), and sprinting (>25 km/h) distance. Mean effects and uncertainty (95% confidence interval, CI) were interpreted against the estimated random match-to-match variability in maximal sprinting speed, high-speed running distance, and sprinting running distance of ±1.67 km/h (95% CI, 1.62–1.72 km/h), ±102 m (95% CI, 99–105 m), and ±60 m (95% CI, 58–61 m), respectively. The estimated post- versus pre-hamstring injury mean differences in maximal sprinting speed, high-speed running distance, and sprinting running distance primary outcomes were −0.25 km/h (95% CI, −0.38 to −0.12 km/h), −43 m (95% CI, −56 to −30 m), and −22 m (95% CI, −29 to −16 m). Players returning to football match-play after hamstring strain injury experienced reductions in high-speed match physical performance that were well within normal match-to-match variation in performance.