Safety

Soccer shinguards that meet the NOCSAE (National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment) are essential soccer safety equipment.

There are between 450,000 and 600,000 soccer goals in the United States. Many are unsafe because they are unstable and either unanchored or not correctly anchored or counterbalanced.

Chances are, if you have watched more than a few youth soccer games, you have seen a player injured in a collision with the goalpost. In fact, goalies suffer a disproportionate number of injuries compared to those playing other positions. The American Journal of Sports Medicine reported in 1995 that, even though goalies comprise only six percent of soccer players, they suffer nineteen percent of all soccer injuries. When a player collides with the post of a heavy, stationary goal post, the player absorbs all of the impact of the collision.

The April 22, 2003 death of a twelve-year old California boy after a heavy iron soccer goal at his San Jose middle school fell, striking his head and pinning him to the ground, was the second such death in a six month span.

Two 2003 studies suggest that heading in soccer may result in weaker mental performance, including a decline in cognitive function, difficulty in verbal learning, planning and maintaining attention and reduced information processing speed, but a critical review of the literature in 2010 by an expert panel of the American Academy of Pediatrics found no support for such a finding, and a 2012 study in the journal Neurosurgery concluded that it was "unlikely" that the subtle cognitive differences detected were sufficient to affect the daily lives of players.

A first-of-its-kind national study of youth soccer injuries recently found that soccer is a relatively safe sport, but that the frequency and type of injuries varied by gender, with boys injured more frequently than girls but suffering fewer ankle and knee injuries.

According to a study reported in the February 2007 issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine, youth soccer players (ages 2 to 18) suffer around 120,000 injuries each year sufficiently serious to require a trip to a hospital emergency room. The total number of soccer-related injuries, including those treated outside of a hospital ER, is estimated to be nearly 500,000 per year.

Goalies suffer a disproportionate number of injuries compared to those playing other positions. The American Journal of Sports Medicine reported in 1995 that, even though goalies comprise only six percent of soccer players, they suffer nineteen percent of all soccer injuries. When a player collides with the post of a heavy, stationary goal post, the player absorbs all of the impact of the collision.

Teenage soccer players who wear protective headgear suffer nearly half as many concussions as those who play without helmets, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Canada's McGill University.

Because the most-commonly used return-to-play guidelines recommend that an athlete who has suffered multiple concussions be held out of sports for increasingly longer periods of time, up to and including the rest of the season, preventing another concussion may be the difference in the athlete being able to continue playing that season or having to shut his season down.