Players at home: Physical activity and quality of life in 12-17 years-old football (soccer) players during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Background: Aggressive preventive actions were required to face the Covid-19 outbreak. However, from March 2020 on, many healthy youth football players have seen their sporting activities disrupted by the restrictions on outdoor exercise.This study describes physical activity and quality of life during April 2020 lockdown of young people participating in organized football.
Methods: 1163 young football players aged 12-17 years (185 girls) completed a web-based questionnaire including the Youth Physical Activity and the Youth Quality of Life-Short Form Questionnaires; information on lifestyle and football-specific activity were also collected. Differences according to sex, urban/rural context and élite/non-élite club level were tested using a 2 × 2  ×  2 MANOVA (age considered as a covariate).
Results: We found that: (i) on average, exposure to football accounted for 3.2 hours/week, was higher in élite clubs and changed in nature, being mainly performed individually; 19% of participants practiced football <1 hour/week; (ii) only 56% of the participants reported 7 or more hours/week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, which decreased with age and changed according to the geographical context; (iii) perceived quality of life was lower in youth playing for non-elite clubs and in older girls; (iv) coaches, rather that official initiatives, were the primary source of football exercises practiced at home.
Conclusion: A status of limited physical activity emerged; this might lead to deconditioning and susceptibility to injuries when football could restart. Governing bodies, football Associations and clubs could exploit these results to take informed decisions and support evidence-based interventions during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Introduction

“Football fights Covid-19” is the name of the FIFA campaign[a] attempting to assist and educate practitioners across the world who are facing the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Developed together with the World Health Organization (WHO), this program issues a series of recommendations (fitness and skill tips, entertainment, and health advices) for managing lockdowns and isolation. While ‘aggressive’ preventive and medical actions promoted by governments and health authorities were necessary at the Covid-19 outbreak, tackling the adverse psychopathological consequences of prolonged self-quarantine periods is also critical for the population not affected by Covid-19.

Among them, many healthy youth football players have inevitably seen their sporting routine disrupted by the restrictions on outdoor exercise.[1],[2] Prolonged home stay – albeit a safety measure to limit the pathogen spread – poses urgent threats to the well-being of individuals. Low levels of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviours can produce negative outcomes on the mental and physical health, and in turn on the quality of life of many young people.

There is no question that participating in organized sports, and football therein, has several beneficial effects for children and adolescents in terms of body composition, cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, bone strength, and psychosocial health.[3-5] Current guidelines suggest that children and youth should participate in at least 60 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA), that should ‘be developmentally appropriate and enjoyable, and involve a variety of activities’.[6-8] Conversely, withdrawal from daily exercise has adverse effects on the ability to cope with illness in general,[9] as regular exercise training is an adjuvant for the immune system function, lowering rates in infections for viral and bacterial diseases.[10] Physical inactivity is also associated with psychological complications that damages quality of life[9]: quarantine periods potentially add further stressors as frustration, boredom, confusion and infection fear, that can have long-lasting sequelae.[11]

Besides hypothesizing a marked decrease in PA, accurate data are required (i) to evaluate the magnitude of physical (in)activity (including discipline-specific exercises) in young soccer players during forced homestay, and (ii) the extent to which WHO guidelines are fulfilled. Thus, the current research aims at describing the physical activity, quality of life and sports-related habits during lockdown of young people who used to play organized football; in doing so, factors as age, sex, environment and competitive level were considered in the analysis, as they could potentially impact on the extent to which children and adolescent enrol in physical activities and perceive their life quality.[12],[13] In addition, the source of information concerning physical activities at home is investigated.

As we face unprecedented levels of uncertainty, quantitative information about the levels of physical activity, sedentary behaviours, and quality of life in young players are required by all the stakeholders (governing and education bodies, clubs, coaching staff) to take decisions and support evidence-based interventions during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, tailored on the specific requirements of specific sex, level and age groups.

Methods

Experimental design and procedures

This is a questionnaire-based observational cross-sectional study. The questionnaire was implemented on the Typeform platform (typeform.com, Barcelona, Spain). Participation was on a voluntary basis and totally anonymous. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Polytechnic University of Milan (protocol n. 6/2020, issued April 2nd, 2020) and met the current ethical standards in Sport and Exercise Science.

Communication about research was shared with professional, semi-professional and recreational clubs’ representatives across the Country. After written detailed explanation of the aims and benefits of the survey, from April 2 to May 3, 2020 they formally invited parents/guardians of youth soccer players to ask their children to complete a web-based form. Clubs and the Italian Football Federation were given access to group data anytime for surveillance and monitoring reasons.

Participants

Girls and boys aged 12–17 years who were playing organized football before lockdown at any competitive level were included if: they reported no history of severe injuries (>28 days of absence for the game) in the six months preceding the survey; they had been living in an isolation regimen (i.e., home stay) for at least two weeks at the time of questionnaire completion. In the following, the term ‘youth’ will be used to broadly define the children and adolescents involved in this report.[7]

Questionnaire structure

A five-sections questionnaire was assembled; an overview of the form structure is reported in Figure 1, while the full list of questions is provided in Supplementary File, Table 1. Key design criteria were that the whole questionnaire had to be completed in around 10 minutes[14] (completion time was recorded), and had to include (without being limited to) validated instruments.

Figure 1.

structure of the “Players at home” questionnaire, reporting sections, topics and example questions.

Table 1.

Responses summary about the first, fourth and fifth sections of the questionnaire, stratified by sex. Data are presented as absolute and relative frequencies (categorical variables) or means and standard deviations (numerical variables).

		Girls (n = 185)		Boys (n = 978)		Total (n = 1163)
Item	Variable or category	count or mean	% or SD	count or mean	% or SD	count or mean	% or SD
Environmental features
Geographical context	Urban	117	63%	718	73%	834	72%
	Rural	68	37%	260	27%	329	28%
Club level	Elite	141	76%	159	16%	300	26%
	Non-elite	44	24%	819	84%	863	84%
Football at home
Football drills source	App/online programs	13	7%	100	10%	113	10%
	On my own	79	43%	441	45%	520	45%
	Parents/friends	32	17%	157	16%	189	16%
	Coach/staff	148	80%a	531	55%	679	59%
	Videos on the web	50	27%	203	21%	253	22%
Social contacts	With mates (n./wk)	3.4	2.7	2.8	2.4	2.9	2.5
	With coach (n./wk)	2.5	2.6	1.5	1.6	1.7	1.8
Sleeping habits
Sleeping hours/night	Week	8.9	1.1	8.8	1.1	8.8	1.1
	Weekend	10.1	1.0	9.9	1.0	10.0	1.0
Napping hours/day	Week	0.2	0.4	0.2	0.4	0.2	0.4
	Weekend	0.2	0.3	0.2	0.3	0.2	0.3

h/wk: hours per week; MV: moderate to vigorous physical activity.

aSignificant difference in proportions between girls and boys (p < 0.001).

Section I included 11 questions about general demographics (sex, age) and study-specific environmental features, e.g., the number of people living at home, facilities as courtyard or terrace, competitive level, games and training sessions per week before lockdown, town/city. The population threshold of 10 000 inhabitants was used to separate urban from rural areas.[15]

Section II corresponded to the Youth Physical Activity Questionnaire (YPAQ).[16] The YPAQ collects information about the frequency and duration of physical and sedentary/leisure activities over the past seven days. With respect to the original form, no data on school-based activities (travelling, physical education) was collected, to comply with the actual context.[17] We also removed the distinction between weekday/weekend activities and added two questions regarding football practice performed with and/or without mates. The YPAQ previously showed good reliability (intra-class correlation coefficient: 0.64–0.92[16])

Section III was the Youth Quality of Life Instrument – Short Form (YQoL-SF), a generic self-administered tool for surveillance in adolescent (11–18 years) populations.[18],[19] The YQoL-SF was chosen as it includes 15 perceptual items measuring sense of self, social relationships, environment and general quality of life. In particular, three questions belonged to the choice and control domain, seven to the community inclusion domain and five to holistic health and functioning. Each item is given a score ranging from 0 (not at all) to 10 (a great deal or completely). Reliability and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) for the YQoL-SF exceeded 0.80 for all domains and for total perceptual score.[18]

Section IV included three additional custom questions, designed for this specific study and concerning football at home, detailing the interactions (number of calls/videocalls per week) with teammates and coaches and the source of practiced football exercise (parents, coaches, online programs, etc.). Section V included six questions on sleep and napping habits, inspired by the PAQ-A (Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents).[20]

Data and statistical analysis

Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS (version 25.0, IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Data are presented as absolute (percentage) frequencies or mean and standard deviation (SD), where appropriate, stratified by sex, urban/rural context and club level (elite/non-elite). YPAQ activities were associated with their corresponding Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) according to reference tables.[21] We then computed time (hours/week) spent in sedentary (1.0–1.5 METs), light-intensity (1.6–2.9 MET), moderate (3.0–5.9 METs) and vigorous physical activities (>6 METs); moderate and vigorous activities (MVPA) were subsequently pooled.

Dependent variables were therefore the amount of hours/week spent in MVPA, light PA, sedentary activities, football-specific activities and other sports.

After checking that the data did not contain outliers, were multivariate normally distributed and that the covariance matrices of each group were homogeneous, differences according to sex, urban/rural context and élite/non-élite club level were tested using a 2  2  2 Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). The ‘age’ factor was considered as a covariate, and the corresponding regression lines were reported separately for girls and boys. Sexage interaction was considered within the statistical model. The same MANOVA test was applied to variables related to quality of life, namely the YQoL-SF score, and the sub-scores of its domains (choice and control, community inclusion, holistic health), as well as to the number of social contacts/week with teammates and coaches.

Measures of effect size were provided as partial eta-squared ([2]) a value of 0.01 was considered as small effect, 0.06 medium effect and 0.14 large effect.[22] Pearson correlation was computed between the amount of MVPA and total YQoL-SF score.

Sex and club level differences regarding the source of football exercises were tested using two-tailed z-tests for proportions.

A significance level of  = 5% was implemented throughout.

Results

A total of 1412 young players were contacted (Figure 2). Of them, 1328 were eligible for this study: 1163 (88%, 185 girls and 978 boys) completed the questionnaire in 10:44 minutes after 5.7 (SD: 1.9) weeks of lockdown. Figure 3 shows the distribution of participants stratified by age, sex and region. Both boys and girls were taking part in 3.0 (0.7) training sessions and 1.2 (0.3) games per week before the activity suspension. Table 1 reports urban/rural context and club level distribution. Participants lived on average with other 4 (1) people at home; 73% (n = 856) of them could dispose of a private yard/courtyard, 61% (n = 708) of a terrace/balcony; 7% (n = 79) reported to lack both terrace/balcony and yard. Self-reported sleeping hours were 8.8 (1.1) hours/night during the week and 10.0 (1.0) hours/night in the weekend; a large fraction of the participants declared to go to bed at or after 12 PM, n = 557 (49%) during the week and n = 782 (67%) during the weekend.

Figure 2.

CONSORT diagram depicting the flow of participants.

Figure 3.

participants demographics (n = 1163) stratified by age and sex (left), and geographical distribution of answers (right, colour saturation proportional to the number of responses from each region).

Football and physical activity

Figures 4 and 5 depict the effects of age, sex, club level and context on YPAQ and YQoL-SF outcomes. MVPA accounted on average for 8.8 (5.8) hours/week, with no statistical differences between sexes (F = 0.205, p = 0.651, low effect), but it was significantly higher in élite clubs (F = 14.444, p < 0.001, low effect), and lower in older participants (F = 4.928, p = 0.027, low effect). Players registered for élite clubs reported approximately 1.5 more hours/week of football-specific activity than their counterparts playing for non-élite clubs (F = 13.307, p = 0.001, low effect).

Figure 4.

Sex and age effects on Physical Activity and quality of life score (YQoL-SF). Data as mean and standard deviations. Statistically significant MANOVA factors are reported. Regression lines were computed using the full data point cloud.

Figure 5.

Club level and urban/rural context effects on Physical Activity and quality of life score (YQoL-SF). Data as mean and standard deviations. *significant difference between urban and rural contexts, p < 0.05; #: significant difference between elite and non-elite players, p < 0.05.

The amount of football-specific activity was lower in older players (F = 23.240, p < 0.001, medium effect), from about 4 (12 years) to 2 (17 years) hours/week. Individual football activity was on average 2.0 (1.5) hours/week, while football time with others accounted for 1.3 (1.4) hours/week; 19% (n = 217) of participants reported to play football less than 1 hour/week or not at all. Overall, boys and girls performed other sporting activities for 2.8 (3.0) hours/week and gymnastics, core or stretching exercises for 1.4 (1.3) hours/week (detailed activity profiling is available as Supplementary File).

Time spent in light PA accounted for 2.2 hours/week, with a large variability and no sex, level or context difference (SD: 3.1 hours/week, p > 0.05, low effects). While also displaying high variability (mean: 53.4, SD: 29.4 hour/week), time spent in sedentary activities significantly increased in both older girls and boys (F = 22.806, p < 0.001, medium effect), irrespectively of club level (F = 0.010, p = 0.982, low effect).

Participants living in rural, with respect to urban context, reported more time (on average +1.5 hour/week) spent in MVPA (F = 35.795, p < 0.001, medium effect), football-specific activities (+1 hour/week, F = 11.457, p < 0.001, low-to-medium effect), and lower time spent in sedentary activities (−5 hour/week, F = 4.615, p = 0.032, low effect).

No significant sexclub level interaction was found for light, sedentary and other sports activities (p > 0.05, low effect).

Quality of life

Global YQoL-SF score was 79 (11); while the YQoL-SF score did not change with age in boys, it significantly dropped by around 10 points in girls from 12 to 17 years (sex factor: F = 5.794 and p = 0.016; age factor: F = 17.521 and p < 0.001; sexage interaction: F = 8.862 and p = 0.003; effect size ranging from low to medium). Interestingly, quality of life score was higher in participants playing for élite clubs (F = 12.307, p < 0.001, low-to-medium effect); no significant sex× club level interaction was found.

Analogous statistical results were observed for the YQoL-SF subdomains, except for the health construct that did not differ between sexes (F = 2.165, p = 0.002, low effect). A low yet significant positive correlation (r = 0.203, p < 0.001) was found between MVPA and YQoL-SF score. Detailed statistical outcomes are available in Supplementary File, Table 2.

Football at home

More than half (n = 679, 59%) of the participants (in particular girls, z = 5.537, p < 0.001, and those playing for elite clubs, z = 2.021, p = 0.043) were told about football drills/exercises by their coaching staff; no differences between level or sexes (p > 0.05) were found for the other sources: 45% invented their own drills, 16% were given exercise from parents or friends, and just 10% referred to app or online programs.

Girls reported on average more social interactions/week with their teammates than boys, namely 3.4 (2.7) vs. 3.1 (2.4) (F = 7.390, p = 0.007, low effect) especially below 16 years; after, reported contacts remained constant for males and reduced in girls (sexage interaction: F = 6.569, p = 0.011, low effect). Contact with coaches/week were comparable across sex, age and context (p > 0.05, low effects), but were higher in élite than in non-élite clubs (2.2 (2.3) vs. 1.5 (1.7), F = 11.233, p = 0.001, low effect).

Discussion

The current study provided a picture on the physical and sport-specific activity, as well as on the quality of life and football-related habits, of 12–17 years youth players during Covid-19 lockdown. The main results were: i) exposure to football practice was 3.2 hours/week and changed in nature with respect to pre-lockdown conditions, as it was predominantly performed individually; ii) the amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity was on average higher than 8.5 hours/week; however, it was lower in older individuals, and only 56% of participants reported 7 or more hours/week, with differences according to the living context; iii) perceived quality of life was lower in youth playing for non-élite clubs and decreased with age in girls; iv) coaches were the primary source for football exercises practiced at home.

Study cohort

According to the latest census of the Italian Football Federation,[b] over 749 000 children and adolescents (incidence: 73%) played organized football in Italy at the time of the survey. Of them, 13 000 were girls (1.7%). The sample included in this study thus represented the 0.2% of the whole Italian players population. Most of the answers came from northern regions (see Figure 3), which from February to May 2020 were the most affected by Covid-19 outbreak (and which are also the most densely populated, thus hosting a wider number of clubs). In the whole Country, severe self-quarantine restrictions were applied from March 9 to May 18, 2020.

Impact on physical activity

The most obvious consequence of isolation measures was the reduction of football practice. As a reference, the average three training sessions and one match reported before activity suspension can be estimated as much as 5–6 hours/week. The reported value of 3.2 hours/week might appear as only slightly lower than that provided by previous investigations[4] on European recreational 10–14 years players (3.6–4.7 hours/week). However, a closer look on results reveals that over 70% of the participants practiced football less than 5 hours/week, and that 19% of the whole sample did not practice any kind of football-related activity in the previous week.

In addition, the nature of football practice during lockdown was inevitably different from ordinary collective sessions and games, as it was predominantly performed in individual form (2 hours/week): although football training is labelled as a vigorous physical activity,[21] it is unlikely that individual training matched analogous levels of exercise intensity and specificity. While we cannot infer comparisons with pre-lockdown physical activity levels, we observed that the drop of soccer-specific activity was only partially balanced by other sports: cycling and running were practiced as little as 0.6 and 0.8 hours/week, respectively, and gymnastics and stretching exercises for 1.3 hours/week (of note, running was together with football the only other “vigorous” activity on the list).

These findings, combined with the lack of physical education classes at school, depicts a scenario of insufficient physical activity for a large fraction of the participants. Almost half of them reported less than the guideline target of 7 hours/week of MVPA.[8] This is even more evident if we consider that participants were not a sample of the general population, but they used to be regularly involved in football practice before restrictions. The observed cross-sectional reduction of PA across adolescence further worsens the situation[23]: this phenomenon is consistent with literature, reporting 4.2%–5.9% decrease of PA per year,[3],[24] and was accompanied by an increase of sedentary activities.

Potentially, this scenario exposes youth players to several harms. First, the prolonged lack of high-intensity exercise and resistance training might have negative effects on cardiorespiratory fitness and body composition.[3],[25] Second, poor physical activity and consequent deconditioning increase the risk of sustaining both acute and overuse sports-related injuries when returning to sport.[7],[26]

Third, and probably most important: while in youth there is still limited but growing specific evidence,[27],[28] in the general population physical activity is recognized as a potent adjuvant for the immune system, globally reducing the risk for developing systemic inflammations.[29],[30]

Factors limiting the decline of physical activity and football practice

Participants living in a rural area displayed higher general PA levels with respect to those from urban areas, probably due to augmented opportunities to move outdoor. Players who played in élite clubs also showed a higher involvement in football activities (1.5 hours/week more than their peers playing in non-élite clubs). This could be due to higher dedication and sense of responsibility towards training, even when the fun of gameplay was missing. In this sense, activity suspension could be a chance to elicit non-technical qualities like resilience and commitment that are equally important to talent development.[31] Another reason for the increased activity in élite clubs’ players could be a more frequent interaction with coaching staff. In fact, 2/3 of participants reported to perform drills and exercises provided by coaches, who frequently and often creatively (anecdotal observation) managed to keep their young players involved in the squad through video and telephone calls. This further enhances the educational importance of the coach-athlete relationship,[32] whose effectiveness in promoting healthy and active behaviours was largely higher than institutional campaigns (e.g., those promoted by FIFA or Italian FIGC), programs or apps.

Although we were not able to compare the absolute YQoL-SF scores with analogous populations, it is worth noticing the higher quality of life reported by elite clubs’ players, independent of the living context. Previous research revealed higher life satisfaction in youth involved in organized football,[4] and in people regularly practicing physical activity[5]; although we found a weak positive correlation between hours/week of MVPA and YQoL-SF score, the underlying phenomenon is likely to be highly complex in nature and a mechanistic link cannot be assumed based on our data.

In adolescents, the ability to engage in recreational, social and sporting activity is a major determinant of psychophysical health. In pathological/specific cases, activity restrictions after injuries or life-modifying conditions can cause depression,[9] while isolation has known psychological effects such as stress, confusion or anger.[11] Our results suggest that this was not the case, and this is probably due the fact that we assumed the sample of this study to include mostly healthy individuals (while subject-specific psychological screening was clearly not feasible). Besides PA levels, even under lockdown restrictions participants could easily maintain connection with their teammates, thanks to mobile applications and social networks (the community inclusion domain of YQoL-SF scored nearly 80%). Nevertheless, YQoL-SF scores were lower in girls, especially during adolescence, perhaps highlighting a higher vulnerability than boys in the current conditions.

Lastly, a word of warning comes from sleeping habits. While the overall amount of reported sleeping hours can be considered acceptable,[33] half (weekdays) and over two thirds (weekend) of the participants declared to go to bed late at night. This was considered to have potential negative effects on school performance (which continued in distanced learning mode) and emotional distress[34]; however, more in-depth analysis on the sleep-wake cycle are required to draw meaningful conclusions.

Limitations

When interpreting results, one should be aware that self-reported questionnaires are prone to inaccuracies (i.e. recall bias) in the measure of frequency, intensity and duration of young people’s activity,[16],[20] especially at the individual level. The estimation of energy expenditure would have been highly unreliable and not completely retrievable for published tables,[21] given that most of the activities were practiced at home or in private yards rather than in their usual places (pitch, field, etc.). Still, the included instruments (YPAQ, YQoL-SF) proved to have good reliability, can provide meaningful information on the type and context of performed activities and were the only feasible method to be used in a large scale-sale survey.[35]

Habits, PA and perceived quality of life might have mutated across lockdown weeks, and the cross-sectional nature of the current study did not allow to capture such longitudinal changes. Repeating questionnaire administration was practically unfeasible, being this study temporally constrained by the duration of government measures.

The proportion of males and females (15.9%) of this research did not match the actual youth players population: we intentionally included relatively more girls, as previously done by Wold et al. in other European Countries,[4] to enable meaningful comparisons between sexes.

While other countries in Europe underwent similar lockdown procedures, caution should be taken to generalize results. Lifestyle habits, school system and most important specific governments restrictions might have a substantial impact on the answers.

Practical implications and recommendations

The current study highlighted that coaching staff are a recognized and valuable source of information for their players. By leveraging their privileged educational role, coaches can echo safety strategies suggested by medical staff to educate players in minimizing potential pathogen spread (exercising only without even mild upper respiratory tract symptoms, avoid crowded places and adopt careful hygienic measures, follow a balanced diet and keep taking adequate sleep time[10],[36]) In addition, during forced homestay, social connection via electronic devices can be exploited by proposing “virtual” technical challenges between teammates.

Resuming some form of PA may help youth recover from the stress and anxiety eventually experienced while in quarantine.[1] Notably, football training has important indirect effects, including the accumulation of social capital.[4] Consistently, the Italian Federation run a national program called “#restart” that promoted distanced training in Spring-Summer 2020, and a gradual resumption of teams’ activities in Fall. Unfortunately, in October 2020 new, strict restrictions were applied to all youth sport in Italy. A slow opening is dated January-February 2021, and according to the pandemic severity it involved sporadic competitions for élite clubs only (strict safety protocols had to be followed) and some form of training sessions for the rest of the community. From Spring 2021 on, selected regional competitions and contact training sessions were unevenly allowed throughout the Country.

Based on the current findings and on the latest reports, some suggestions could be extrapolated concerning exercise prescription after prolonged suspension: coaches and staff should be aware that the immune system is responsive to exercise, but the adaptations depend on effort duration and intensity.[29] Exercise regimens as heavy-exertion workloads or high-intensity training without adequate rest are associated with transient immunodepression and increase susceptibility to infection pathogens.[10],[29] Thus, caution is mandatory in prescribing prolonged high-intensity exercise, as in addition players could not be sufficiently protected from injuries. Conversely, regular engagement in moderate-intensity aerobic training, besides enhancing cardiometabolic health,[8] increases immunosurveillance in antipathogen activity of immune system macrophages[29] (e.g., short bouts of 65%–80% of O2,max, as running or bicycling, progressively increasing in frequency and intensity). The restart period should also carefully focus on injury prevention (e.g., balance, core strengthening, motor control and stretching[1]) and age-appropriate exercises that strengthen muscle and bone (i.e. stairs climbing, squats, push-ups, rope jumping, playing tennis or other hopping activities, ideally 3 days/week[1],[37])

Conclusion

Covid-19 has been defined as a ‘new challenge for human beings’[38]: the life of millions of young players worldwide has been altered, and the natural desire to get back to normal football matches and trainings (one of the highest-scoring question (84%) in the YQoL-SF form was “I look forward to the future”) should meet realistic and rigorous considerations. “Football cannot restart soon” in such a precarious environment.[2] However, even if collective sessions and games were initially discouraged, there is a strong rationale in exploiting the health benefits of PA and counter the establishment of the sedentary behaviours that emerged in the current study. Governing bodies, football associations and clubs are encouraged to develop specific strategies, properly modulating exercise prescriptions to ensure that youth can engage in targeted (football-specific) physical activities that could be practiced in a safe environment.

Click here for additional data file.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-spo-10.1177_17479541211041703 for Players at home: Physical activity and quality of life in 12–17 years-old football (soccer) players during the Covid-19 lockdown by Matteo Zago, Nicola Lovecchio and Manuela Galli in International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching

Click here for additional data file.

Supplemental material, sj-xlsx-2-spo-10.1177_17479541211041703 for Players at home: Physical activity and quality of life in 12–17 years-old football (soccer) players during the Covid-19 lockdown by Matteo Zago, Nicola Lovecchio and Manuela Galli in International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching