A new era for amputee football: FIFA Foundation joins WAFF in global expansion
The sport of football, regarded as “The World’s Game,” has just taken another step in being more accessible and inclusive for athletes with disabilities. On April 17, 2025, the FIFA Foundation, an independent organization that shares FIFA’s goals of using football to unite the world and bring about positive change in society, announced that it will be supporting the World Amputee Football Federation (WAFF) over the next three years in a series of projects and initiatives that seek to provide more opportunities for amputee football players on a global level. Established in the late 20th to early 21st century, WAFF, the world governing body for amputee football, strives to make the sport more accessible and inclusive for amputee athletes by generating interest, integrating national amputee football associations, and cultivating relationships between mainstream and amputee football. In making this announcement, FIFA Foundation Executive Chairman Mauricio Macri said:
“We are delighted to announce this collaboration with the World Amputee Football Federation…Helping WAFF deliver these initiatives to increase the number of amputee football players around the world is a natural synergy for the FIFA Foundation, and we look forward to working together over the coming years to help them deliver their objectives.”
Over the promised three-year period, the FIFA Foundation will support the WAFF in organizing World Cup, continental and national tournaments for the men and women athletes, and help WAFF deliver on development projects in new countries—placing an emphasis on those that promote the game for women and young participants. WAFF President Mateusz Widłak referred to this partnership as a “new and pivotal chapter” for the sport stating:
“We’ve dreamed of this moment for years. Now, this partnership will help us continue to grow on every continent and bring us even closer to the wider football world. We’ve launched and are developing women’s amputee football and junior amputee football, and now this historic partnership takes us even further.”
While amputee football can trace its beginnings to the early 20th century with athletes being captured in photographs playing football on crutches in post-war Europe, according to the American Amputee Soccer Association (AASA), the sport as it is played today was created by accident in large part due to the efforts of Don Bennett, an American amputee who wanted to create opportunities for athletes like himself to participate fully in competitive sport. In 1980 he founded the AASA and, in the years that followed, formed the first national amputee soccer team. On the international level, one year following the first Amputee World Cup in Seattle in 1984, Bennett and others established the WAFF to help provide a framework and support for international competitions moving forward. Amputee football is now played in more than 60 countries and every four years there is the Men’s Amputee Football World Cup. Most recently in 2024, the first Women’s Amputee World Cup was held in Barranquilla, Colombia—40 years after the first ever Amputee Football World Cup and only one year after the program’s official launch in March of 2023.
The athletes of amputee football – described as a “liberating sport” by the WAFF – have the ability to choose how they play the game, either with or without a prosthesis, and within either non-disabled, multi-disability or mixed amputee football leagues. The game is played in the internationally recognized 7 v 7 format on a pitch of 60 x 40 meters, slightly smaller compared to the preferred professional dimensions of 105 x 68 meters, where outfield players compete on elbow crutches and the goalies have a single-arm limb difference.
This new partnership between the FIFA Foundation and the WAFF is in support of a larger pledge made by FIFA President Gianni Infantino back in March of 2023 to “help amputee players find a greater place for themselves within the football family.” Speaking at an amputee football game in Kenya that year he said:
“We have to include them because they are part of society. We are all part of the same society, the same world. Football has this unique magic of being able to unite the world; including everyone regardless of their background, ability (or lack of ability), origin, everything.”
Photo:
@WorldAmputeeFootball / IG
