The short answer
Football is not a contact sport on paper, and almost nobody on a German pitch wears a mouthguard (Mundschutz; as a dental appliance, Sportschiene). Yet in the dental chair football produces a steady stream of broken front teeth — because the danger is not the tackle, it is the elbow at head height in an aerial duel, the head-to-head collision going up for the same ball, and the goalkeeper’s face meeting a knee, a boot or a post. Nothing in the rules requires a guard, and we are not going to pretend it does. What we will say plainly is this: for children between roughly eight and fourteen, whose permanent front teeth have just arrived, and for goalkeepers at any age, the case for wearing one is genuinely strong.
The sport's reputation, and why the mouth disagrees
Ask a dentist which sports break front teeth and you will not hear boxing first. You will hear the ones with a ball, many players and no protective equipment — which describes football exactly. Five mechanisms account for nearly all of it.
The elbow in the air. Two players jump, one uses an arm for balance or leverage, and the elbow arrives at exactly the height of the other player’s mouth. This is the classic. It is usually accidental, rarely even a foul, and it is the single commonest way a footballer loses a front tooth.
Head against head. Two skulls converging on the same cross. The mouth is caught between them, and the lower jaw is driven upwards into the upper — the mechanism that cracks molars rather than incisors.
The goalkeeper’s world. Diving at feet, a knee to the face, a boot at close range, the post. Goalkeepers are exposed to a class of impact the outfield players simply do not meet.
The ball at short range. A shot taken from three metres carries real energy, and a deflection off a face has broken teeth more than once.
The ground. Artificial turf and frozen winter pitches are unforgiving. A player tripped at speed puts a hand out or does not — and the chin and the front teeth take the landing.
1Find the tooth and hold it only by the crown
2Do not clean it, do not put it in water
3Keep it moist
4Go straight to a dentist or the out-of-hours service
Where the injuries actually cluster
Risk in football is not spread evenly, and knowing where it concentrates is what turns “everyone should wear one” into a decision you can actually make.
Children between about eight and fourteen. The permanent upper incisors erupt around seven or eight. They stand at the front of the mouth, they are larger than the baby teeth they replaced, and their roots are still forming for a couple of years. That is precisely the age at which children in Germany join a club and start playing matches. A child in this window is in the highest-risk group for dental trauma in all of sport.
Goalkeepers. At every age and every level, for the reasons above.
Anyone with front-tooth dental work. Crowns, veneers or an implant crown chip where enamel would merely bruise.
Adults in recreational leagues. The Wednesday-evening indoor game, the company team, the over-thirties league. Reactions are slower, the enthusiasm is not, and hard indoor floors do the rest.
If you are outside these groups and play as a fit adult outfield player, an honest dentist will tell you that the risk is real but modest, and that the decision is reasonably yours. We will still say yes if you ask — it costs little and the downside of a broken incisor lasts decades — but we are not going to invent a crisis.
The four objections, taken seriously
Almost every conversation about mouthguards in football runs into the same four sentences. They deserve real answers rather than dismissal.
"I can't call for the ball"
This is the strongest objection, and it is not imaginary. Football is a talking sport: you call for the pass, you organise a wall, the keeper shouts “away”. A thick boil-and-bite guard genuinely muffles all of it.
A guard made from a scan of your own teeth is a different object. It is thinner where speech is formed, it grips the upper teeth so you are not holding it with your bite while you shout, and it does not slide when your mouth opens. Speech is not identical to normal — it takes a few sessions — but players who make the switch generally stop thinking about it. If you have tried a shop guard and given up, you have not really tested the question.
"I can't breathe"
Same root cause. A guard that extends too far back or sits too thick at the front turns hard running into a fight with your own equipment. A properly trimmed custom guard clears the soft palate and leaves the airway across the front open. The adaptation period is short.
"Nobody in my team wears one"
True, and it is the real reason most people don’t. It is also worth noticing that the same was said about shin pads within living memory, and about helmets in cycling. In youth football, the social problem solves itself the moment one or two children turn up with a guard in club colours — which is why the colour choice is not a gimmick but a compliance strategy.
"It's not compulsory, so it can't be necessary"
Football’s rules in Germany permit a mouthguard but do not require one, and no referee will ask about it. That reflects the sport’s history and its self-image, not a measurement of the risk to your teeth. Plenty of protective equipment was optional right up until it wasn’t. The rules are a floor, not advice.
Youth football in a German club: what parents should know
Most children in Germany play in a Verein, and a few practical points come with that.
Ask the club about insurance before you need to. Clubs are typically covered through their state sports association, and what that cover contributes towards dental treatment varies considerably between policies. It is a five-minute question to the Jugendleiter now and an unpleasant surprise later.
Expect to replace a child’s guard. A mouth that is changing teeth outgrows a guard within a season or so. That is not the guard failing; it is the child growing. Plan for it the way you plan for boots.
Braces change the calculation. A child in fixed braces (feste Zahnspange) has metal brackets sitting directly against the inside of the lip. An impact that would have bruised now cuts. This is one of the situations where we would push harder than usual for a guard designed around the appliance.
Let the child choose the colour. A guard in the club’s colours, or a fluorescent one, gets worn. A beige one lives in the bag.
Costs are private. A sports mouthguard is not covered by statutory health insurance (gesetzliche Krankenversicherung, GKV) at any age — unlike a night guard (Knirscherschiene) for diagnosed teeth grinding, which is a statutory benefit and an entirely different device. What making one involves is described on our Sports mouthguards – service page (EN).
When it happens anyway
Dental injuries on a pitch are handled with the coach’s first-aid kit and a decision made in three minutes, usually by someone who has never faced this before.
A knocked-out tooth is not necessarily a lost tooth. Pick it up by the white crown, never by the root. Do not clean or scrub it. Get it into a tooth rescue box (Zahnrettungsbox) from the pharmacy, or into UHT milk (H-Milch) — never water, never a dry tissue — and to a dentist within the hour. A knocked-out baby tooth is never put back. The complete sequence is set out in Can a mouthguard really save your teeth?, and a rescue box belongs in every youth team’s kit bag.
A chipped tooth: bring the fragment. In milk, in a rescue box, in cling film. It can sometimes be bonded back on.
Outside surgery hours, use the dental out-of-hours service (Notdienst). A Sunday afternoon knock does not have to wait until Monday.
What is harmless — and what needs an appointment
Yes. Equipment must not be dangerous to other players, and a soft guard inside your own mouth is not. Referees do not object to it, and it is worn in professional football too, more often than spectators notice.
Meaningfully, yes. Goalkeepers meet knees, boots and posts at head height as part of the job. If you buy one guard for one child in your family, buy it for the keeper.
For football specifically, the custom guard wins on the two points that decide whether it gets worn at all — speech and breathing. A ready-made guard has to be gripped by the teeth to stay in place, which is the opposite of what you want while calling for the ball. The wider comparison is in Custom-made sports mouthguard or a standard model — which is better?.
Yes, and it is made with that in mind. A guard for a mixed dentition is designed with room for the teeth still arriving, which is also why it needs re-checking as the mouth changes. Bring your child in and we will say honestly whether now is the right moment or whether it is worth waiting a few months.
It should not be relied on for that. The evidence is unsettled and a mouthguard is not head protection. Its documented value is against dental and soft-tissue injury — real, but specific.
Football does not require a mouthguard, and most players will finish their careers without needing one. That is a genuine argument, and it is why we do not tell every adult five-a-side player they must have one. But the injuries this sport produces are concentrated in two groups — children with brand-new permanent front teeth, and goalkeepers — and in those groups the case is strong enough that we raise it unprompted. An elbow in an aerial duel is nobody’s fault and nobody’s plan. A guard is one of the few things on a pitch you can decide about in advance.
Zahnarztpraxis Tsypin · Wuppertal. This article was medically reviewed and is provided for information; it does not replace an examination. Updated August 2026.
