BACKGROUND: Football is the most practised sport in the world and is associated with the risk of injuries in the players. Some studies have been published that identify injury prevention programmes, but there is no review of the full body of evidence on injury prevention programmes for use by football coaches. The aim of this article was to carry out a systematic review of published studies on injury prevention programmes for adult male footballers, identify points of common understanding and establish recommendations that should be considered in the design of injury prevention strategies. METHODS: PubMed and Embase databases were used to identify relevant published articles using the following keywords: 'soccer', 'injury', and 'prevention'. RESULTS: A total of 2,512 studies were identified initially, but only 11 studies met the inclusion criteria, and their outcomes are presented. Results revealed that injury prevention programmes in football have focused on strength training, proprioceptive training, multicomponent programmes (balance, core stability, functional strength and mobility) and warm-up programmes. CONCLUSION: Based on results from the studies analysed, football players can lower the incidence of match and training injuries by participating in dynamic warm-up programmes that include preventive exercises before games or during training sessions, and by adding strength, balance and mobility training to the training sessions.

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