related injury rate. Injury

Why do soccer players seem to have such low pain toleranceLike most Americans, I’ve never been a soccer fan and I don’t really follow the game at all. But I know the rest of the world does, so I watched the game this morning. I understand the strategy of trying to game the ref into calling a foul, but is the flopping around like a fish out of water really necessary? There is a lot of acting in basketball too, but typically players "flop" to the ground and get back up without shedding tears.Also, what’s with the stretchers? Players who twist a knee/ankle seem to be carried off on stretchers. This happened twice in the game I saw, and at least once the Demaryius Thomas Authentic Jersey guy came back in like 2 minutes later. Each time the injury obviously was not serious. Why is this necessary? Can’t the guy just hop or limp off the field under his own power or with the help of his teammates/trainers? Isn’t it a little embarassing to need a stretcher?I love watching and participating in sports of all kinds. Sports is a universal language that says a lot about people and their culture. So is there some kind of culture of coping with pain that is unique to Americans or just not present amongst soccer players? This isn’t the first Glenn Dorsey Youth Jersey soccer game I’ve ever watched but the amount of dramatic injuries I see is always astounding. Help me understand.posted by b_thinky to Sports, Hobbies, Recreation (91 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favoriteIt’s theatrical. Some do www.official49ersnflproshop.com/Nike-Glenn-Dorsey-Jersey.html it more than others. The stretchers are also a precautionary measure. Most of these players bodies are literally worth $millions. If there’s slightest chance they’re really injured, the investment must be protected.posted by normy at 11:42 AM on June 10, 2006The phrase you’re looking for is "Diving Nonces"posted by DrtyBlvd at 11:43 AM on June 10, 200610 best football dives.posted by essexjan at 11:50 AM on June 10, 2006The stretchering is partly a way of limiting the histrionics by the tackled player and his teammates.posted by beniamino at 12:01 PM on June 10, 2006The second and greatest, by far, obstacle to the popularity of the World Cup, and of professional soccer in general, is the element of flopping. Americans may generally be arrogant, but there is one stance I stand behind, and that is the intense loathing of penalty fakers. There are few examples of American sports where flopping is part of the game, much less accepted as such. Things are too complicated and dangerous in football to do much faking. Baseball? It’s not possible, really you can’t fake getting hit by a baseball, and it’s impossible to fake catching one. The only one of the big three sports that has a flop factor is basketball, where players can and do occasionally exaggerate a foul against them, but get this: The biggest flopper in the NBA is not an American at all. He’s Argentinian! (Manu Ginobili, a phony to end all phonies, but otherwise a very good player.)But flopping in soccer is a problem. Flopping is essentially a combination of acting, lying, begging, and cheating, and these four behaviors make for an unappealing mix. The sheer theatricality of flopping is distasteful, as is the slow motion way the chicanery unfolds. First there will be some incidental contact, and then there will be a long moment enough to allow you to go and wash the car and return after the contact and before the flopper decides to flop. When you’ve returned from washing the car and around the time you’re making yourself a mini bagel grilled cheese, the flopper will be leaping forward, his mouth Munch wide and oval, bracing himself for contact with the earth beneath him. But this is just the beginning. Go and do the grocery shopping and perhaps open a new money market account at the bank, and when you return, our flopper will still be on the ground, holding his shin, his head thrown back in mock agony. It’s disgusting, all of it, particularly because, just as all of this fakery takes a good deal of time and melodrama to put over, the next step is so fast that special cameras are needed to capture it. Once the referees have decided either to issue a penalty or not to our Fakey McChumpland, he will jump up, suddenly and spectacularly uninjured excelsior! and will kick the ball over to his teammate and move on.posted by CunningLinguist at 12:04 PM on June 10, 2006 [2 favorites]In soccer the clock doesn’t stop when play stops, so the stretcher was brought in to speed up play (if the fish is flopping around for a minute or two on the field, they could be stalling for time rather than looking for a penalty).posted by lowlife at 12:05 PM on June 10, 2006I know very very little of football (or ’soccer’). But I do know it’s nothing official49ersnflproshop.com/Nike-Phil-Dawson-Jersey.html more than a cheap trick to make the ref take out a red or yellow card for the opponent, or at the very least to try to stall the game a little in hectic moments.As for the stretchers. footballer legs are quite literally worth several million euros a piece. Besides, it’s probably regulation.posted by Harry at 12:06 PM on June 10, 2006There’s the theatrics, but there are also real injuries.Referees can be fooled, but not doctors and surgeons who have to fix torn ligaments and such.How does soccer stack up against other sports in terms of injury risk?Although endurance running is often considered to be a high injury sport (about 50 to 65% of all endurance runners are injured in an average year), the actual rate of injury in running is comparable with that of soccer. Various studies suggest that the running injury rate is about five injuries per 1000 hours of running, with little difference between training and competition (’Prevention of Running Injuries by Warm Up, Cool Down, and Stretching Exercises, The American Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol. 21(5), pp. 711 719, 1993). This is a little higher than the ’practice’ rate of injury for soccer but much lower than soccer’s competition related injury rate. Injury rates in other sports have been poorly studied, but it appears that soccer has one of the highest rates of athletic damage (Sportblessures breed Uitgemeten, Haarlem, DeVriesborch, 1990).posted by funambulist at 12:09 PM on June 10, 2006yeah, I know what it is, but isn’t it embarassing to the players sense of self pride or seen as wimpy to the fans? Do people really accept this without booing or hating the repeat offenders?Athletes in the NBA, NFL, NHL, etc are worth just as much, but if you see a stretcher, it’s because of something like this (Willis McGahee blowing his knee out) or worse.What about other sports like Rugby Demaryius Thomas Orange Jersey or Aussie Rules football? Do those players participate in the same kind of behavior? I know soccer players are immensely talented athletes and all, but is the concept of toughness foreign to them or just not valued, or what?