Aspetar Sets a New Benchmark in Football Injury Prevention

Aspetar, Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital has set a new benchmark in football injury prevention with the successful rollout of its pioneering Sports Injury and Illness Risk Management Plan (RMP) tool across all 18 professional football clubs in Qatar. This league‑wide initiative, supported by recently published scientific papers, offers a practical roadmap for professional football globally to better protect players’ health while sustaining high performance.

Ahead of the 2022–2023 season, Aspetar experts trained club medical and technical staff to use the RMP tool to identify, assess and prioritise injury and illness risks at team, player and season level. Clubs identified 809 risks—an average of 45 per team—with 72% related to individual players, highlighting the importance of personalised prevention approaches. From these, 265 prioritized risks were selected for action and addressed through 354 targeted tasks, including individualised strength programmes, better communication pathways and refined load management around congested match calendars. 

Khalid Ali Al Mawlawi, Aspetar acting Director General, said: “Prevention has always been at the heart of Aspetar’s work. This project marks the next evolution moving from excellence within individual teams to collective prevention across an entire league. By giving every club access to the same science-based risk-management tools, we are investing in players’ long-term health, safeguarding careers, and offering a model of preventive sports medicine that can shape the future of football worldwide.”

Mr. Hani Taleb Ballan, Chief Executive Officer of the Qatar Stars League, said: “Our partnership with Aspetar reflects a shared vision to embed prevention at the heart of Qatar’s football ecosystem. Aspetar continues to lead globally by developing and implementing robust, evidence-based standards for managing injury and illness risks across all league clubs—a milestone that sets new benchmarks in safeguarding QSL players’ health and sustaining their performance throughout the season. This collaboration exemplifies the synergy between Qatar’s leading sports institutions to create a safe, professional, and sustainable environment that supports player welfare, and enhances their performance.”

The RMP project builds on Aspetar’s Injury and Illness Prevention programme for Performance (IP2), with almost half of all planned mitigation tasks directly aligned with IP2 focus areas such as the Nordic hamstring and Copenhagen adduction exercises, recovery strategies and targeted player education on sleep, nutrition and mental health. In total, 58 specialists across the league were assigned 363 task‑manager roles and 535 specific responsibilities, underscoring a culture of shared accountability between doctors, physiotherapists, fitness coaches, technical staff and players.

“The Aspetar RMP tool takes risk management in football from concept to daily practice,” said Professor Roald Bahr, Director of the ASPREV programme. “By identifying an average of 1.9 risks per player and prioritising the most critical ones for action, clubs now have a structured, data‑driven method to reduce injury and illness risk season after season.”
With its combination of scientific rigor, practical implementation and full‑league engagement, Aspetar is reinforcing Qatar’s position as a global leader in sports medicine and football injury prevention.

Aspetar has published numerous studies in leading international journals, advancing knowledge in sports medicine and injury prevention. Among the latest is a paper led by Dr. Bahar Hassanmirzaei and his research team, highlighting Aspetar’s pioneering efforts in injury prevention and its excellence in risk management.