Author(s): LUO, H., NASHARUDDIN, N.A., TENGKU KAMALDEN, T.F., ZHU, X.L., XIANG, C.Q., Institution: UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA, Country: CHINA, Abstract-ID: 770

INTRODUCTION:
The sport of soccer has received increasing attention and sparked multidisciplinary exploration. There is a lack of comprehensive scientometric analyses of this change over time. Our objective is to understand emerging trends and knowledge structures in the field of study through scientometric analyses.
METHODS:
The scientometric scrutiny conducted in this investigation was underpinned by the Web of Science Core Collection as the designated database. The search strategy encompassed the employment of the following query: TS= ("football" OR "soccer"). The ambit of citation indexing was confined to SCI-E, SSCI, and A&HCI indices. Within the spectrum of document classifications, exclusivity was accorded to entries categorized as Article or Review Article. The temporal scope spanned from December 1, 2003, to December 1, 2023, with an absence of linguistic constraints. Redundancies were expunged utilizing the CiteSpace tool, culminating in a corpus of 9069 unique documents, subsequently imported into CiteSpace version 5.7.R5 for ensuing analysis.
RESULTS:
The five most cited references within this dataset were as follows: Gabbett TJ, 2016, titled "The training—injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder?". Ekstrand J, et al., 2011, titled "Injury incidence and injury patterns in professional football: the UEFA injury study". Ekstrand J, et al., 2016, titled "Hamstring injuries have increased by 4% annually in mens professional football, since 2001: a 13-year longitudinal analysis of the UEFA Elite Club injury study". Rampinini E, et al., 2009, titled "Technical performance during soccer matches of the Italian Serie A league: Effect of fatigue and competitive level". Hopkins W, et al., 2009, titled "Progressive statistics for studies in sports medicine and exercise science". The five most cited journals were the Journal of Sports Sciences, Sports Medicine, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, and British Journal of Sports Medicine. The United States was the country with the highest number of publications and citations, followed by the United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, and Brazil. The top five most cited institutions were Liverpool John Moores University, Victoria University, Australian Catholic University, Edith Cowan University, and University Technology Sydney. The top 5 authors with the highest number of total citations in our dataset were Hopkins WG, Bangsbo J, Reilly T, Rampinini E, and Gabbett TJ.
CONCLUSION:
This study reveals three prominent and discrete general research trends that have occurred over the last five years. These trends were denoted as "training load and athlete monitoring," "sports injury risk and prevention," and "sports performance and analysis". This study identified emerging trends and knowledge structures in the field of soccer research. These findings can inform the future direction of funding agencies and research groups.