After the success of the women’s soccer world championship Ermanno Rampinini, head of the Human Performance Lab (HPL) of Mapei Sport, explains what changes when men and women play football. Our team sports consultant immediately takes care to point out that the sport is the same, but we must take into account gender differences as men and women have different physical characteristics.

«Males, for example, have greater muscle mass and consequently more strength and muscular power, for females it is necessary to take into account the presence of the period. To date, research has been much more concerned with male than with women’s football, which is developing a lot in recent times. However, some facts are known – comments Rampinini. – The qualities to be trained are similar: for both males and females it is important to have good aerobic quality and endurance, as this is an intermittent sport the player must not do endurance work like a marathon runner, but must train the ability to endure the different phases of the game so it is important to have good qualities from the muscular point of view, to be able to exploit in the contrasts, in the sprints … The differences between the two sexes are also noted in the frequency of certain types of injuries: the players go more frequently encounter with cruciate ligament rupture (prevention from this point of view is very important and it would be advisable for girls who want to approach the game of football to be educated from a young age to implement a preventive program to avoid these types of problems); in men there are more injuries of muscular type, developing greater powers, the muscular and articular structures are more stressed from this point of view».