Women soccer players are significantly less likely than men to fake injuries, according to researchers from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
The researchers last yearstudied videotapes of men’s international matches and found an average of 11.26 apparent injuries per match (players were writhing or rolling on the ground, grabbing a body part, yelling, having ananguished facial expression or hiding their face) but only 7.2 percent of those injuries were “definite” (players left the game within five minutes or was bleeding).
The same analysis,reported in the journal Research in Sports Medicine, for women’s soccer showed an average of 5.74 apparent injuries per game but 13.7 percent of those apparent injuries were definite injuries, twicethe proportion as in the men’s games analyzed.