Background Injury surveillance is an important pre-requisite for injury prevention planning. There is lack of information about injuries, rates, patterns and the procedures used for injury prevention of football players in the professional Egyptian soccer league.

Objective To record and describe the injury incidence and characteristics in male professional football participating in Egyptian football league by using a club based injury surveillance system.

Design Prospective study, where a random of 6 governors among 27 different governors existing in Egypt were selected and including all participating with man first team at footbal Egyptian league.

Setting Any injury detected for athletes in the first male team of professional football Egyptian league that were registered in Egyptian Football federation was recorded with its characteristics and methods of management .

Patients (or Participants) 42 different teams including 928 players that were followed during season 2017- 2018.

Interventions (or Assessment of Risk Factors) Data collection was difficult as this was the first serveillance done so we used direct contact with athletes by Facebook messenger, WattsApp and phone calls as well as club surveillance sheets.

Main Outcome Measurements Injury incidence rates and characteristics.

Results 2869 injuries occurred during 441 hours of exposure, giving an injury incidence of 8.4 injuries/1,000 hours. The injury incidence during matches was higher than in training. The most common injury recorded was thigh strain (310 injuries), representing 17% of all injuries. Ankle sprain was second common injury recorded (180 injuries). Meniscal injuries recorded were (126) injuries while ACL injuries recorded were (77 injuries) Re-injuries constituted 13% of all injuries The incidence of match injuries showed an increasing injury tendency over time in both the first and second halves.

Conclusions This is the first recorded surveillance for injury detection of football professional athletes recorded and published in Egypt. We need more studies and establishing injury prevention programs and implementing them with more injury surveillance in the future.