Youth Football Tournaments: Are We Developing Players or Harming Their Growth?

Currently, many children and teenagers dream of becoming football players and dedicate a large part of their time to achieving this goal. The clubs' medical and performance departments' primary mission is to reduce the risk of injury to these athletes, allowing them to have more playing and training time to develop their full capabilities. This study aimed to investigate whether participation in youth football tournaments with congested schedules increases the risk of injury in U15 footballers, particularly during critical stages of maturation. In this way, in a retrospective manner, an analysis was conducted of the injuries recorded after a period marked by the participation of a U15 elite team in a preseason youth football tournament. Additionally, the maturational stage of each athlete on this team was recorded and the external workload data through the Global Positioning System (GPS), which included total distance (TD), high-speed running (HSR), accelerations and decelerations greater than or less than 2 m·s^-2 (ACC-DEC2), and accelerations and decelerations greater than or less than 3 m·s^-2 (ACC-DEC3), from the weeks before the tournament were used, aiming to understand whether, in the injured athletes, the accumulation of these metrics during the tournament exceeded the accumulation of the same metrics before the tournament. According to the results obtained, eight athletes sustained injuries during the tournament and the two weeks following it. All injured athletes were in the circa or post-peak height velocity (PHV) maturation stage. In the analysis of the GPS data, it was found that 87.5%, 75%, and 50% of the athletes who suffered an injury exhibited higher rolling sum (RS) values during the tournament compared to their previously recorded maximum values regarding TD, HSR, and ACC-DEC2, respectively. In contrast, 75% of the athletes who did not suffer an injury recorded higher maximum RS values before the tournament compared to during the tournament regarding the parameter of ACC-DEC3. The participation of young footballers in the circa-PHV and post-PHV stages of maturation in several games on consecutive days seems to induce negative consequences for the athletes, namely a greater risk of overuse and acute injuries. The external load metrics presented appear to correlate with the risk of injury, specifically a higher risk of injury in athletes whose accumulated values of TD, HSR, and ACC-DEC2 during competition participation are higher than those previously recorded. Conversely, the presence of higher accumulated values of ACC-DEC3 prior to competition participation compared to those recorded during the competition may be a protective factor regarding injury risk. Careful management of microcycles and applied workloads is a key task to control or prevent injuries and, in this way, increase the young footballers' participation in games and training.