Functional Movement Screen (FMS™) score does not predict injury in English Premier League youth academy football players.

Purpose: despite being commonly used, the interaction between Functional Movement Screen (FMS™) score and injury in any elite football population has not been studied. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between FMS™ score and non-contact injury among elite youth players from a Premier League football academy.

Materials and methods: eighty-four players were screened during the pre-season period and non-contact injuries recorded prospectively for the entirety of the 2013/14 football season. Logistic regression analysis was utilized to explore the relationships between the individual sub-tests of the FMS™ and injury. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to assess the predictive value of the FMS™ composite score.

Results: logistic regression revealed no relationships between score achieved on the individual sub-tests and injury. ROC curves indicated poor predictive ability of the composite score. Players scoring below the identified cut-off values (≤14 or ≤15 depending on injury type considered) were 0.66 (95%CI: 0.40-1.10), 0.70 (95%CI: 0.32-1.57) and 1.52 (95%CI: 0.50-4.61) times as likely to suffer ‘any’, ‘overuse’ and ‘severe’ injuries respectively than those who scored above the identified cut-off values.

Conclusions: there was no relationship between FMS™ score and injury. It was unable to predict any non-contact injury among English Premier League youth academy players.

Practical implications: The present findings suggest that the FMS™ should not be used for risk stratification among young elite soccer players since the composite score was unrelated to injury likelihood. However, the FMS™ may be useful in other ways. For example, it may provide useful information to applied practitioners when designing strength-training programs for groups of players they are unfamiliar with, as is often the case at the start of a new season.