Anterior cruciate ligament ruptures in Spanish soccer first division: An epidemiological retrospective study

•Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is a prevalent sport-related injury that can threaten an individual’s sporting career.•Contributing to characterize ACL injuries may help in improving the way professionals prevent and/or approach these undesired events.•Injury surveillance through media-based platforms is becoming a valid, efficient, and versatile research resource that contribute substantially to epidemiological reports quality in elite soccer. Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is a severe and complex sport-related injury that can threaten an individual’s sporting career. The purpose of this study is to investigate the epidemiological patterns of ACL ruptures in Spanish male first-division soccer players. The Transfermarkt and Besoccer online electronic databases were screened for ACL injuries between 2010–2011 and 2019–2020 seasons. Injury incidence, injury mechanism, side of the injury, recurrence of the injury, days of recovery and severity, player’s position, dominance, season, and moment in which the injury occurs were collected. A total of 110 ACL ruptures were registered, with 15.45% of them being re-ruptures either ipsilateral (6.36%) or contralateral ruptures (9.09 %). The ACL incidence rate was 0.0364 per 1000 h of total play with a 68-fold risk in matches compared with training. Predominant injury mechanism was non-contact (56.36%) and the mean lay-off time was 218.8 days, with higher incidence in September-October and March-April. Goalkeeper was found to be the less affected position. This investigation identified an average of 11 ACL tears per season in the Spanish first-division soccer league, most of them occurring in matches with approximately one ACL injury per team every two seasons. Our results from media-based platforms are in accordance with reports based on data from healthcare databases. Further research is needed to corroborate these findings in equivalent contexts. Descriptive studies are classified as Level III evidence according to Daly et al., 2007.