2025 Major League Soccer Medical Symposium

Collegiate and professional soccer leagues rely upon their medical teams to treat soccer related injuries and return injured players to the sport in a safe and efficient manner. This activity will provide medical teams with guidance on the identification, prevention, and treatment of injuries and illness common to the soccer athlete. The team approach will be emphasized using case presentations, injury updates of current recommendations, and methods for returning to sport in common areas affecting the soccer population. Emphasis will be placed on acknowledging the rare, but life-threatening cardiac events and return to play shared decision-making model. We will address the importance of an Emergency Action Plan to prepare and rehearse for catastrophic injury and illness. Emphasis will be placed on early recognition of concussion, understanding unique clusters of injury, and return to play in the challenging post concussion spectrum. Attendees will gain exposure to MLS soccer experts with approach to complex musculoskeletal injuries such as the Footballer’s ankle and Achilles injury treatments, as well as complex decision-making approaches for intra and extraarticular hip pathologies in the professional soccer player. Attendees will be asked to participate in lively Go or No-Go exercises where experts offer their insight on difficult “game time” return to play decisions in the medically ill and injured soccer athlete. We will also give the attendees tools to better understand a team approach to care of athletes through sessions on effective team building, multimodal team approaches to return to play, and open forum debates. This Symposium will also feature nonoperative care of athletes by focusing on soft tissue injuries that dominate in professional soccer and how to best navigate these injuries. Additionally we will offer tools and tricks to help our aging athletes cope with arthritic changes by addressing biologic treatment, modalities, and load management.