The inaugural McCourt Global Amputee Soccer Invitational took place on April 19, bringing elite international and domestic amputee soccer to Shaw Field with free open-access admission. Four clubs competed: Olympique de Marseille (OM), a select squad from the U.S. Men’s National Amputee Soccer Team program, Arena Football Club out of Delaware, and Colorado Rapids Amputee Soccer.
Alongside McCourt Global, a family-owned firm focused on philanthropy, sports, and real estate, and the founding donor of the McCourt School of Public Policy, the Disability Cultural Center at Georgetown University hosted this event. The inaugural director of the center, Dr. Amy Kenny, has long championed the importance of disability culture and inclusion on campus.
“Our center exists to celebrate disability culture and foster a culture of access and belonging at Georgetown,” Kenny said in an interview with McCourt Global. “Co-hosting this Invitational invites our campus and the broader Washington, D.C. community to experience disability excellence in sport up close, as a community, and with the energy and respect these athletes deserve.”
The afternoon’s marquee 40-minute exhibition began at 1:30 p.m., featuring the OM team against players from the American national program, followed by three additional 30-minute matches. In amputee soccer, field players with lower-limb amputations compete on forearm crutches without a prosthesis; goalkeepers play with upper-limb amputations. The sport demands explosive strength and full-body coordination that is amazing to witness up close.
The presence of OM’s squad gave the event an undeniably international dimension. Olympique de Marseille became the first Ligue 1 club, the highest level of the French football league system, to launch an amputee football team, presenting the squad to fans before a home match against RC Strasbourg in January 2025. The program runs through Treizieme Homme, OM’s social responsibility foundation, created in 2017.
The group trains at OM Campus, which houses the same state-of-the-art facilities used by OM’s women’s and junior teams. Following this visit to Georgetown, the team will make its debut in the amputee division of the Europa League, a tough European club competition for a group just over one year old.
While the match was an exhibition of international competition ahead of this year’s upcoming World Cup, it was as important for the American clubs as it was for the Olympique de Marseille squad. The American Amputee Soccer Association (AASA) was one of three American clubs to send teams to the exhibition.
AASA, a co-sponsor of the tournament, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the amputee community for more than 40 years. AASA is the only U.S. member of the World Amputee Football Federation, and therefore the only American organization eligible to compete with national amputee teams globally and in the World Amputee Football Federation World Cup.
The other two American clubs in the afternoon’s line-up included Arena FC and Colorado Rapids Amputee Soccer, whose presences illustrate the work the AASA has piloted throughout the U.S. over the years. The inclusion of the amputee team of the Colorado Rapids, an American professional soccer team, in this invitational demonstrates the rising trend of Major League Soccer teams incorporating amputee soccer into their club’s brand. Amputee soccer is a growing sport throughout the world, though it rarely receives media attention. The Georgetown students who made it out to Shaw Field on Sunday received a much-needed and hard-earned showcase of these four teams’ talent.
