Anthropometric and physical profiles in elite and sub elite Swedish male soccer players

Abstract

Soccer is a popular team sport played by children, adolescents, men and women across the world. The game requires multiple physical skills such as endurance, strength, mobility, rapid change of direction and running pace. Elite soccer players train these abilities to enhance performance, prevent injuries and to cope with the training and competition volume. This paper compares anthropometric and physical profiles of an elite- and a sub-elite team from the same Swedish soccer club. The purpose is to determine possible differences and locate areas of improvement in the process of preparing the sub-elite players for transition to the elite team. A significant difference in body fat (Elite: 13.3 ±2.6 vs Sub-elite:15.6 ±2.7 %) and lean body mass (66.4 ±7.6 vs 59.9 ±3.8 kg) was found. Significant differences in mobility in both left (147.1 ±8.5 vs 157.1 ±4.7°) and right (145,1 ±8.4 vs 155 ±4.1°) quadriceps was also sown in the results. No significant difference was found in strength between the two groups. Age and active years in the sport could explain the difference in body composition. The sub-elite team reported more training hours than the elite team which most likely generates equal strength in both groups. It is possible that the assumed high biological age among the sub-elite players could have affected the results as well. Due to the limited amount of participants in this paper the results are not representative for the entire population. Therefore, comparing a bigger group of elite and sub-elite soccer players is of big interest.