Summary
Performance and career longevity data for the 'average' pro-soccer player is demonstrated for the first time, and compared to the same post-ACLR data in the senior author's studies of pro-soccer players
Abstract
Introduction
Greater understanding of the ‘average’ professional soccer player’s career in terms of longevity and performance level provides clinical outcome studies to be put into context. This has hitherto not been established.
Methods
Appearance data of all male footballers playing in the top 4 English football leagues between 2005 and 2010 was retrieved from www.fbref.com. Players were grouped into 5 ability levels based on the highest level played and career trajectory was tracked according to age. These results were compared with those published on the senior author’s players having ACL Reconstruction (ACLR).
Results
4117 footballers were included. 3778 (91.8%) were on-field players. 1795 (43.6%) played in a minimum of 3 games in the English premier league (EPL) and of these, 856 (47.7%) made at least one appearance for their national side. Goalkeepers had older mean first and last appearance ages (21.8 +3.9 vs 20.0 +3.0 years, p=<0.01 and 33.3 +5.1 vs 30.5 +4.7 years, p=<0.01 respectively) and longer overall careers (12.4 +4.9 vs 11.6 + 4.7 years, p=<0.01) than on-field players. On-field players reached their highest level at an earlier age (22.0 + 4.0 vs 24.1 +4.5 years, p=<0.01) than goalkeepers and continued to play at their high level for similar periods (4.3 +3.8 vs 4.4 +3.9 year, NS).
On-field footballers in the highest level group play at their highest level for over 3 years longer than players in lower leagues. At 5 years EPL players playing internationally (EPLI) and EPL on-field players have a 60% and 40% probability of continuing to play at their highest level respectively compared to less than 20% chance in the Championship and lower leagues. At 10 years the probability of still playing at their highest level is 40% and 18% in the EPLI and PL groups respectively compared to less than 2% in the lower leagues.
“Still playing” rates in the senior author’s post ACLR players with a mean age of 30 years are up to 12.9% lower than the mean “still playing” rates for the 'average' players of the same age. We have previously reported a loss of 1.6y of career length after ACLR. In pro-soccer players the return to play rates at the same level after ACLR are very high (mean 96% with over 90% at the same level in one of our publications), but it is not sustained with only 30% at pre-injury level at 2y and 22% at 5y.
Conclusion
Career duration in soccer players is affected by the position played and ability level with lower league players having a less than 2% chance of playing at 10 years compared to 40% in international players.
Although the results after ACLR are sobering, when put into context by the data on ‘normal’ non-ACLR players careers, they are perhaps not so bad.