Objective: To analyze the playing actions and match circumstances which involve physical contact between players and lead to injuries in men’s World Cup football. Design: Prospective injury surveillance and video analysis of matches in three FIFA World Cups. Setting: 2002, 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups™. Participants: Players and team physicians at the 2002, 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups™. Main outcome measures: Contact injury risk incidents linked with an injury and contact injury incidents without linkable injury. Results: Three hundred and four contact injuries were reported and 671 contact injury risk incidents were identified from the video recordings. One hundred and twenty-eight (42.1%) of the reported contact injuries were linkable with a contact injury risk incident. Two variables were identified as independent predictors of injury; attack type (p<0.01) and the involvement of foul play (p<0.05). Conclusions: The limitations of combining injury report data with data obtained through video analysis make the results of the present study difficult to interpret. There is limited evidence that the current definition of an injury risk incident, as defined in the FIA methodology, is adequate for linking match events with injuries. Future studies are needed that provide more reliable methods for identifying injuries using video recordings.