The Effectiveness of a Coach-Focused Intervention on Preventing Knee Injuries in Amateur Football Players

Marius Henriksen

Status: Completed

Conditions: Knee Injuries

Treatments: Other: Usual Practice; Behavioral: Ahead of the Game

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06846008

APPI2-MSK-2025-KNIPS_2.0

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this clinical trial is to find out if a coach-focused intervention can help prevent sudden-onset, severe knee injuries in youth and senior amateur football players. The main question it aims to answer is:

Does a coach-focused intervention reduce the number of sudden-onset, severe knee injuries? Researchers will compare a coach-focused intervention, designed to help coaches to use effective injury prevention training, to usual football practice to see if the intervention can prevent sudden-onset, severe knee injuries in football players.

Participants will:

Either receive weekly information and motivation on effective injury prevention training or continue their usual football practice for 14 weeks.

All will receive a weekly text message with a survey link to report any sudden-onset knee injuries among their players for 18 weeks.

Enrollment: 320 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Coach or manager at Danish amateur football teams at levels from under 14 (U14) years to senior teams.
2. Minimum 18 years of age.
3. Access to a mobile phone and computer.

Exclusion criteria

1. Limited Danish language skills, which prevents full understanding of the provided material and questionnaires.
2. Affiliation to teams playing under a license ranking by the Danish Football Association where training by a physical trainer is required according to the license criteria of the Danish Football Association).
3. Affiliation solely with old boys'/girls' teams (where the players have to be aged 32 and 29 , respectively, in the current season ).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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320 participants in 2 patient groups

Injury prevention training

Experimental group

Description:

Evidence-based injury prevention training programs and exercises will be send weekly to participants in the intervention arm. Additionally, participants in the intervention arm will be encouraged to access a study specific online platform containing information, inspiration, pep-talks and posters on injury prevention training.

Usual practice

Active Comparator group

Description:

Usual training

Treatment:

Other: Usual Practice