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DISCLOSURE: THIS POST IS IN SPONSORSHIP WITH HOTELS4TEAMS, BUT ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE MY OWN
Injuries are a common occurrence in any form of contact sport and can range from minor scrapes and bruises, to muscle strains, and more serious injuries such as those involving blows to the head or neck. In terms of risk of injury, soccer doesn’t present as high a risk of serious injury as rugby or American football but sits in the mid range for risk, ahead of less heavy contact sports such as field hockey or basketball.
It’s important that kids are encouraged to participate in sport and the health benefits of being physically active, plus the social benefits, will nearly always outweigh the risk of occasional injury. However, parents are naturally often concerned with their child’s safety and will want to ensure that any risk of injury through sports is minimised.
Let’s look then at the most common soccer injuries (in children’s soccer) and how parents can help their child to avoid soccer injuries.
Scrapes and bruises
Soccer is often played in playgrounds, backyards, or in housing estate cul-de-sacs. Playing on hard surfaces isn’t ideal and children should be encouraged to play on grass. Additionally, playing surfaces should be free of hazards such as broken glass or stones. With very small kids, adult supervision may be desirable to prevent the games from becoming too rough and tumble. Wearing shoes with good grips will also help to guard against slips.
Shin injuries
When kids start to play soccer competitively, the one piece of safety equipment that they must have is shin guards (sometimes called shin pads). These are worn under a long pair of soccer socks and will help to prevent serious bruising or a broken leg from mistimed challenges. Buying your kid a good pair of shin pads will help protect against injuries and shin guards can be bought that also provide some ankle protection.
Muscle strains
Muscle strains are common in any form of athletic pursuit and can include hamstring or calf injuries, or back strains. You can’t totally guard against them but encouraging your child to do a pre match warm up will help. In competitive soccer, one would expect the soccer coach to instill this discipline in his or her team. It’s sometimes difficult to get kids to take time out from kicking the ball to do a full warm up but even some gentle jogging prior to kick off will help to warm muscles up.
Hand injuries (for goalkeepers)
Sprained wrists, broken fingers, and bruising are hand injuries that soccer goalkeepers can suffer in the course of saving powerfully hit shots. To guard against this, goalkeepers wear specialist gloves and investing in a good quality padded pair of goalkeeper gloves will minimise injuries for your child.
Injuries caused through wrong footwear
A lot of soccer injuries result from players wearing inappropriate footwear. If kids are wearing shoes that don’t have sufficient grip, then they are likely to slip which can cause bruising, concussion, etc. They may also be more susceptible to being knocked to the ground in a challenge. There are specialist astro turf shoes which can be used for both soccer and field hockey and which will help your child to perform well and minimize injury. For 11-a-side matches on grass, studded specialist football boots are normally required.
Injuries caused by foul play
As children get older and start to play in competitive leagues and travel, it becomes more important that matches are supervised by referees. The desire to win, and local rivalries, can lead to heated moments on the pitch and the role of the referee is to crack down on bad fouls and ensure that order is restored promptly if any arguments break out. Sometimes matches will be refereed by school coaches, or an independent referee may be hired. Making sure that your kid plays in a league that provides this supervision is desirable.
It’s important to get safety into perspective with regards to soccer. It’s a fun healthy activity for children (and adults) to play and most injuries are fairly minor. We can’t wrap our children up in cotton wool, so we need to allow them to play sports and they will probably derive a great many benefits from being part of a social team activity. However, where we can help our children to minimize risk of injury, then of course it makes sense to do this. Making sure they have the right footwear, shin guards, and gloves is one way that parents can help, and we should also take an interest in where they are playing and in ensuring that the appropriate supervision is in place.
