Football is a popular sport with a large number of injuries, especially in the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Since ACL injury causes the most time lost from competition in soccer, it has influenced a strong research focus to determine the risk factors for injury. It is necessary to understand injury risk factors to identify the injury-prone athletes and to develop injury prevention plans. Most studies have addressed physical and biomechanical risk factors but nowadays psychological factors are mentioned as an important risk factor predictor [1]. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of mental stress on knee injuries of football players. In order to analyse kinetics of football players, different vertical jumps and a math test were designed. Amateur football players (n=6), in the interest of comparing and finding patrons, performed the jumps once under non-stress condition and once under stress condition. The evaluated parameters were reaction forces, joint moments and muscle activity in the lower extremities. The simulations were done using biomechanical simulation software based on a motion capture data collection, and the obtained data was assigned with Vicon Nexus and Anybody to a musculoskeletal model. The psychological stress was carried out using BioGraph Infiniti, which can measure data such as temperature and skin conductance, EKG, etc. In order to assess and plot the results, a numerical program called Matlab was used. From the results these conclusions were proposed. Significant differences in knee joint between stress and no stress condition were found at ground impact during the first landings of the Drop Jumps. All 6 players except one had higher results in stress condition, especially in the right leg jumps. Even though the results from our study help to elucidate the mechanisms of psychological stress in male football players, a larger population of subjects should be used to complete and validate this work.

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