When bone cancer took Jordan Obernesser's leg, giving up soccer never crossed his mind. Obernesser was only 14, but he'd played the beautiful game since he was 3. Adjusting to life as an amputee after beating cancer, he was confident he'd find a way back to the sport he loved.
"Once I found amputee soccer, I knew that was the thing for me," Obernesser told USA TODAY Sports. "It's probably one of the most freeing feelings I've had."
Obernesser and the U.S. men's national amputee team will compete at the 2026 Amputee World Cup in San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico, from Nov. 13-22. The United States is hoping to make it out of the round of 16 for the first time ever, ambition buoyed by a balance of veteran players and newcomers.
Nine of the 15 players
on the U.S. national team have previous Amputee World Cup experience. Captain Nico Calabria is 32 and headed to his fourth World Cup, while 18-year-old Obernesser is debuting as the youngest on the roster.
"We have experience and we have some youth and we have a lot of guys in their prime," head coach Jason Fiscina said. "It's really like the perfect storm, in my opinion."
Amputee soccer – "amp soccer" for short – is played 7v7 by one-legged field players who use forearm crutches and one-armed goalkeepers. Goalkeepers are not allowed to leave their box and field players are not allowed to wear prosthetic legs or touch the ball with their crutches, which is ruled an automatic handball. There is no offside rule and throw-ins are actually kick-ins, so games are high-scoring and feature an abundance of set pieces and shots on goal.
“If you like soccer, you’ll like amputee soccer and you might be wowed by what you see," Calabria said. "The sport is full-contact and then you add these crutches in and it just changes the physicality of it. You're adding weapons. You can't hit people with them, but like jockeying for position, they come into play. So it's really dynamic and fast-paced and exciting."
The first official Amputee World Cup was played in 1986 with six teams, while the 2026 tournament will feature 24 teams from four continents. The U.S. is not a favorite to win. The Americans' 15th-place finish at the 2022 World Cup, when they were knocked out in the round of 16 by Haiti in a game that went to extra time, was the best in program history.
Calabria and Fiscina compared the trajectory of the amputee men's national team to that of the able-bodied USMNT: capable of hanging with some of the sport's top teams, but still waiting for a breakthrough moment. They believe the 2026 Amputee World Cup could be it.
"A lot of really athletic guys, a lot of talented players, but not quite the same 'it's in the blood' like Spain," Calabria said. "I think we can beat any team in the world on any given day. We just need to play really well. We have to make it really hard for teams to beat us."
A place to belong
The national team is a mixture of players who were born with a limb difference and those who lost a limb later in life. Everyone's story is different, but what unites them is a shared experience of living with a disability and a fierce desire to compete.
This team doesn't want your pity. They want your support and they want to win.
"I think it's a refreshing environment for people who are new to the disability community," said Calabria, who was born without his right leg. "Dude, no one cares that you have one leg here. You're just another one of the guys and what people care about is how good you are at soccer and how hard you work."
There can be a learning curve for those who pick up amp soccer later in life. Obernesser grew up as a right-footed player, but after his dominant leg was amputated he had to relearn how to kick with his left foot – while balancing on forearm crutches. It was a frustrating process that Obernesser said made him consider quitting soccer altogether, but he persisted.
Now, Obernesser estimates his technical ability is equal to or perhaps even better than it was pre-amputation. As a college freshman at Montana State, he trains with able-bodied soccer players and said fellow students are delighted when they learn he plays for the amputee national team.
"People are just blown away and instantly so supportive and curious," Obernesser said. "It's kind of overwhelming the amount of people that are asking me where to watch it and when I leave and what my training's like."
The U.S. aims to be a possession-based team that breaks opponents down in the final third, but also has the flexibility to sit deep and launch counter-attacks. Central midfielder Calabria and striker Musabwa Nzirimwo are focal points of the offense, while goalkeeper Greg Cunningham anchors a strong defense.
The U.S. is scheduled to play group-stage matches against Uzbekistan on Nov. 14, Morocco on Nov. 15 and Uruguay on Nov. 16. All World Cup games will be livestreamed on the World Amputee Football Federation's YouTube channel.
Off the field, the American team's biggest obstacles are financial and infrastructural challenges.
How the U.S. fits into the worldwide amputee soccer landscape
The United States still lags behind other countries when it comes to financial investment in amputee soccer. The sport is dominated by nations like Turkey, Angola, Uzbekistan, Haiti, Poland and Russia, whose national soccer federations or Paralympic committees pump money into amputee soccer.
Turkey, the reigning Amputee World Cup champion, receives official support for its amputee program from the Turkish Football Federation. Angola's men's national amputee team, the 2018 Amputee World Cup winner and 2022 runner-up, is primarily organized and supported by the Angolan Paralympic Committee.
In contrast, amputee soccer in the United States is governed by the American Amputee Soccer Association (AASA), an organization independent from the U.S. Soccer Federation. Although U.S. Soccer provides an annual grant to support amputee soccer youth development and frequently donates apparel, USSF doesn't officially fund the amputee national teams or list them as an official extended national team – a group that includes deaf soccer, cerebral palsy soccer and powerchair soccer.
In the U.S., amp soccer at the grassroots level is largely supported by Major League Soccer clubs. The New England Revolution's amputee program, which Calabria helped found in 2018, is the most robust and won the U.S. Cup this year. Obernesser got his start through the Colorado Rapids amputee program.
Fiscina scouts players every year at the U.S. Cup and estimated there are about 100 men’s amputee players nationwide. The national team pool is 20 athletes.
American amputee soccer players are not paid to play. The AASA covers travel and lodging for rostered national team players and fundraises around major events to help offset costs for players, but players pay their own way to talent identification camps. Unlike the $655 million prize pool for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which paid $51 million to champions Spain, there is no prize money available in the Amputee World Cup.
One benefit of amputee soccer is its accessibility, Calabria said. Whereas power soccer requires expensive specially designed powered wheelchairs, the only equipment amputee soccer requires is a pair of crutches. That affordability has helped the sport flourish in less-developed countries, including those without access to prosthetics.
"It's like 20 bucks for a pair of crutches. They don't need a $20,000 prosthetic," Calabria said. "I think soccer being the most accessible sport in a non-adapted format, and then amputee soccer being the most accessible version of adapted soccer and limb difference being a really common disability, it's just super widely played."
Amputee soccer is played in more than 60 countries, according to the World Amputee Football Federation, which was established in 2002 as the sport's global governing body. Despite that, amputee soccer is still not recognized as a Paralympic sport, but the sport's international and national leaders are working to make it happen in time for the 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane, Australia.
To be considered for the Paralympics, amputee soccer must first create international anti-doping policies and a rigid classification system that groups athletes by impairment type. The sport also has two things working against it: There are no consistent league competitions, and women's amputee soccer is struggling to develop at the same pace as the men's game.
Calabria, who is on the AASA board, said he anticipates amputee soccer will become a Paralympic sport in his lifetime. That will require both financial investment and significant public interest; however, if successful, Calabria believes amputee soccer's trajectory could mirror the recent exponential growth of women's sports in the United States.
"My hope is that when I look back on my career, less so as an athlete and soccer player but more as an advocate for the sport, that we say we got this to be a mainstream adaptive sport in the United States," Calabria said. "It takes the wider community taking an interest for us not to be doing this in darkness."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: On upstart US Amputee World Cup team, 'no one cares that you have one leg'
