The most common injury in football depends on which version of the sport you mean. In soccer (association football), hamstring strains top the list, making up 24% of all injuries among professional men’s players. In American football, knee and ankle injuries are the most frequent, with the knee alone accounting for roughly one in five injuries across most positions. Both sports share a high rate of sprains, strains, and ligament damage, but the specific patterns differ because of how the games are played.
Hamstring Strains in Soccer
Hamstring injuries have become increasingly dominant in professional soccer over the past two decades. Data from the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study, which tracked men’s professional teams from 2001 through 2022, shows these muscle tears now represent nearly a quarter of all injuries. That’s a significant rise over the study period, and it reflects the growing physical demands of the modern game: more sprinting, tighter schedules, and less recovery time between matches.
Most hamstring injuries sideline a player for about 13 days, though the range is wide. Mild strains can resolve in a week, while more severe tears keep players out for three weeks or longer. The real problem is recurrence. About 18% of hamstring injuries are repeat episodes, and nearly 70% of those recurrences happen within two months of returning to play. That quick reinjury window suggests many players come back before the muscle has fully healed or before they’ve rebuilt the strength needed to handle match intensity.
Knee and Ankle Injuries in American Football
In American football, the knee is the single most commonly injured body part. Across high school players, knee injuries show up as the top or second-most-common injury site for nearly every position, from offensive linemen (where roughly 21% of all injuries involve the knee) to tight ends (19.5%) and defensive tackles (19.1%). The forces involved in blocking, tackling, and sudden direction changes put enormous stress on the ligaments and cartilage of the knee.
Ankle injuries run a close second, particularly for skill positions. Among running backs, the ankle is actually the most frequently injured body part at 19.5% of all injuries. Wide receivers and centers also see high ankle injury rates. These injuries typically happen during cuts, awkward landings, or when a foot gets caught under a pile of players.
The overall injury rate in high school football sits at about 4 per 1,000 athlete-exposures (an “exposure” being one practice or one game). Offensive linemen as a group sustain the largest share of total injuries at 18.3%, followed by running backs at 16.3% and linebackers at 14.9%.
ACL Tears and Non-Contact Mechanisms
Among the most feared football injuries in both sports is a torn ACL, the ligament that stabilizes the knee during pivoting and deceleration. What surprises most people is that 70 to 75% of ACL tears happen without any contact from another player. The athlete simply plants their foot, decelerates, or changes direction, and the ligament gives way. This makes ACL injuries partly a biomechanical problem: players whose knees collapse inward during landing or cutting are at higher risk, which is why prevention programs focus on strengthening the muscles around the knee and improving landing mechanics.
ACL reconstruction typically requires surgery and six to nine months of rehabilitation, making it one of the most costly injuries in terms of time lost. For professional athletes, a full competitive season is often written off entirely.
Ankle Sprains Are Often Undertreated
Lateral ankle sprains (the classic “rolled ankle” where the foot turns inward) are among the most common injuries in both versions of football, yet they’re consistently undertreated. In professional soccer, the ankle is the third most frequently injured area, accounting for 10 to 18% of all reported injuries.
The time lost varies dramatically by severity. A mild (grade I) sprain keeps a professional player out for about 15 days. A moderate (grade II) sprain averages 39 days, and a severe (grade III) sprain reaches 50 days. Youth players tend to miss even more time, averaging 33 days across all grades compared to 15.5 days for professionals. That gap likely reflects differences in access to rehabilitation resources and the maturity of the healing tissues.
The real concern with ankle sprains is that they’re often dismissed as minor. Players frequently return before the ligament has regained full stability, setting up a cycle of chronic ankle instability and repeated sprains that can linger for years.
Concussions Across Both Sports
Concussions are a major category in American football and a growing concern in soccer. In top-tier NCAA Division I football programs, the rate works out to roughly 0.14 concussions per player per season, a figure that closely mirrors the NFL’s rate of 0.13 per player. With rosters of 100 athletes, that translates to about 14 concussions per program each season.
In American football, head and face injuries rank among the top three injury sites for quarterbacks (12%), tight ends (16.5%), and several other positions. Tight ends face a notably elevated concussion risk compared to other offensive players, likely because they’re involved in both blocking at the line and receiving passes downfield, exposing them to collisions in varied situations. Quarterbacks, meanwhile, sustain the majority of their injuries from being tackled (70.5% of their injuries come from this mechanism), and shoulder injuries top their list at 16.3%.
How Injury Patterns Vary by Position
In American football, your position on the field shapes your injury profile significantly. Offensive linemen and defensive tackles suffer primarily from knee injuries and sprains/strains, the result of repeated low-body collisions at the line of scrimmage. Running backs are most vulnerable at the ankle, which takes a beating during cuts and when defenders dive at their legs. Quarterbacks stand out for shoulder injuries, a predictable consequence of the throwing motion combined with the impact of being sacked. Wide receivers split their injuries fairly evenly across the ankle, knee, and shoulder.
Cornerbacks have a unique pattern: they sustain fractures at a rate about 50% higher than other defensive positions. This likely reflects the high-speed collisions they experience when closing on a ball carrier in the open field, where neither player has the bracing benefit of a set stance. Centers, who initiate contact on virtually every play, see the majority of their injuries from blocking, and their most commonly injured areas are the knee, ankle, and shoulder.
These positional differences matter for prevention. A training program designed to protect a lineman’s knees looks very different from one aimed at keeping a running back’s ankles healthy or reducing a quarterback’s shoulder injuries. Targeted conditioning based on positional demands is one of the most effective ways to lower injury risk across the sport.