A new study suggests that professional soccer players are just as likely to suffer an injury on grass compared to artificial turf, contrary to the popular belief that artificial surfaces were more dangerous for players.
“The feeling of players is that they have more injuries with artificial turf,” said lead investigator Alessandro Ciompi, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Rome. “We were surprised because we did not see any difference.”
Dr. Ciompi noted that artificial turf wasn’t as safe as grass when it first burst onto the scene, but advancements in turf technology has brought the surface up to speed with its competition.
Italian Study
For their study, researchers charted injuries on four first-division Italian soccer clubs during the 2011/12 season. Two of the four teams had artificial home turfs, while the other pair had natural grass on their pitch. The four selected teams played in the same region of Italy, which helped to keep climate and weather conditions similar among participants. Researchers tracked 36 games on each surface.
When looking at well over 1,000 hours of play on each surface, researchers found:
- 20 injuries occurred on natural grass, while 23 occurred on artificial turf. Based on the hours of play, researchers did not find the difference in injuries to be significant.
- More contact injuries occurred on the artificial turf, while more noncontact injuries occurred on natural grass.
- Strains were the most common injury on either surface.
Despite their optimism about the results, Dr. Ciompi cautioned that the surface study was limited to soccer matches. Similar studies on football games have found that ACL injuries occur at a much higher rate on artificial surfaces.
Dr. Silverman comments
This is an interesting study. I’m glad artificial surface technology has caught up to natural playing surfaces. Natural surfaces can develop undulations or divots that can wreak havoc on the knee and ankle.
Another thing I like about this study is that it used soccer instead of football. Soccer is much more conducent to natural bodily movements. Sure, soccer players still get bumped and torque their body into odd positions, but they are not subjected to the constant force of another person pushing, pulling, or throwing their weight on top of them in order to tackle them. I’d be interested in looking at the noncontact ACL injury statistics between football and soccer. After all, I’m sure these athletes make very similar movements during the process of play when they aren’t being contacted by another player.
Related source: Medscape