The grunge look is perfect for football photos. The original image was captured on a Canon 5D mkIII at ISO 25,600 at F5.6 with a shutter speed of about 1/640. A 150 – 500mm lens is my favorite for covering most of the field.
I start the process in camera raw by desaturating the image and then adding contrast. I open it in Photoshop. Working with 2 layers I add noise and mask out part of one layer so the athlete pops out of the photo.