Unlocking Male Youth Soccer Players’ Peak Performance Potential: Exploring the Impact of Maturation, Age, and Physical Demands on Neuromuscular Injury Risk and Recovery Following Competitive Matchplay

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is a pleasure, read paper like that. It is top. In my opinion the research must be directly application. In your specific case is clear and directly application.

it is one of the hot topic because in the Young football the people copy and paste the professional football model. The teams only play 3 times per week and the players suffered injuries and burnout. 

It is very clear that the players need at least 2 days off. Not only for the Physiological part and also in the cognitive part. If you thing in the player like a grow process need to adapt and improve into the time. If the coaches and the Physical coaches did not planning the training loads and the learning topics the players could not improve his levels of performance. When the players are in fatigue period can´t learn new contents or new skills.

Congrats to show to the football industry to focus on the important parts.

For me is a honor to review your great paper.

Not any suggestions, only my warmly congratulations.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the time taken to review our work and provide such positive feedback, it is very rewarding for us a research team to hear they find the work valuable and directly applicable to the populations and organisations we aimed it to benefit.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study evaluated the 7-day recovery period in between games in high-level youth male soccer players. My primary criticisms for this paper are minor in nature and outlined below.

Title: Please consider adding the word, "male" to the title

Abstract:

1. Please provide the mean age and standard deviation of the participants

2. The methods do not clearly indicate that analysis extends beyond 120-h post-game. Please clarify.

Introduction:

1. Please be specific about the sex of the participants in the discussed previous literature. 

2. Consider adding the age grouping concept to your purpose statement. This would help clarify concepts for the whole paper.

Methods:

1. How was play time determined for analysis? This should be added to this section.

2. Figure 1 is quite helpful. Thank you for having it.

3. Ln 182: what do you mean by "maturity offset?" How was this assessed? It seems to be key to the study, but details need to be added for study repeatability.

4. Ln 197: this is the first time well-being data are mentioned. Please add how these data were collected to the Methods

5. Statistical analysis: consider specifically aligning each component of the statistical analysis to the specific study aim that it supports.

Results:

1. Ln 261-264: Table 1 does not actually show all of this information. Please either add this to table 1 or adjust this sentence accordingly.

2. Ln 273: how are you determining the data to be "clinically relevant?"

3. Figures 2 and 3 are actually quite small and I am unable to see them well. These need to be adjusted so the reader can see and interpret this information. The figures also need to have a clear demarcation of A and B.

4. Captions for the figures are quite short and could use more detail to ensure understanding for the reader.

5. A covariate analysis was run, but only reported for some. Please include the results of these analyses for each component.

6. Section 3.1.5: please provide the full statistical details of the ANOVA

7. Table 2 is not legible in its current format

Discussion: please be sure to provide an overview of the key findings in relation to each purpose in the first paragraph.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

No further suggestions. All of my concerns were adequately addressed.