Background Compliance with and attitudes towards injury prevention programs, like ‘The11’ (from FIFA), can influence the effectiveness of such programs.

Objective The aim of this study is to monitor the use of the ‘The11’ during practice sessions in one season and to determine opinions of coaches and players concerning this program.

Design This study is part of a cluster-randomised controlled trial on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of ‘The11’.

Setting First class amateur teams from one district in the Netherlands participated in this study. They all had practice sessions 2–3 times a week.

Participants Male players aged 18–40 years were eligible for inclusion in the study. 10 teams, including 212 players, participated and were followed for one season (September 2009–June 2010).

Intervention The participating teams were instructed to perform ‘The11’, during each practice session throughout the season.

Main outcome measurements Compliance of all players was registered each session by the coaches. At the end of the season coaches as well as players were asked to fill in a questionnaire to assess their attitudes towards ‘The11’ and injury prevention in general.

Results Preliminary results show that teams completed ‘The11’ in 81% of all practice sessions and players in 84% of the sessions they attended.

All the coaches (n=12) stated that including injury prevention in the practice sessions is important. 53% of the players returned their questionnaire (n=110). Of them 54.8% was moderately to highly motivate to perform ‘The11’ during each practice session. On average a third of the players mentioned every exercise as ‘boring’. Coaches and players believed that ‘bench’, ‘sideways bench’ and ‘hamstrings’ are the most important three (from 10) exercises to prevent soccer injuries.

Conclusion More extensive results of this study are expected in February 2011. Also the correlations between compliance, attitudes and injuries can be presented in Monaco.