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