US blind football team prepare for historic Paralympic debut at LA28

 How do you go from Paralympic debutants to the podium at the same Games? That's the challenge facing the USA blind football team at LA28.

The team are preparing to make their Paralympic debut at the LA28 Paralympic Games as hosts. Launched in November 2022, the national team recently played against the national teams of Peru and Kazakhstan during an international tournament held in Seattle in the lead-up to the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Jorge Polanco, who coaches the team, has gone from helping hand to head honcho in the space of four years, having only coached sighted 'soccer' players before 2022.

“The transition is challenging,” admits Polanco, a Texan who now lives in Louisiana.

“In blind soccer, you are preached to do what you don't do in sighted soccer: joysticking players. In sighted soccer, you guide a player, let them figure things out, let them make mistakes. In blind soccer, if you do that, there's the possibility of serious injuries. It's about being as detailed as you can in your descriptions. 

“That was a massive adjustment. At the beginning you get lost in watching these amazing athletes play and their ability and you forget: 'Oh, I need to guide'.”

A new chapter in the beautiful game

Polanco got into blind football almost by chance: “Where I live, I am the president of our local soccer club and our director of coaching Ryan Lazaroe got on the [US blind football] team as an assistant. I live 10 minutes down the road and Ryan told me there might be an opportunity. I originally came on the programme as a logistics guy: washing kits, ice baths, that kind of thing. Then a couple of coaches left, Ryan became head coach and I became one of his assistants.”

When Lazaroe left the job, Polanco felt he was the right man in the right place and his application was successful. 

And what he lacks in blind football coaching experience, he more than makes up for in other areas. In particular, after spending 23 years in the US Marine Corps, he wasn't at all daunted by bringing together a team of athletes from diverse backgrounds from across the United States. 

Polanco says blind football athletes compete on the field for each other. “That's the kind of camaraderie we're trying to build. In the service, you move every three or four years, give or take, so you're always in a new world with different people. But you have to work together to make the mission successful.”

Polanco himself is of Peruvian origin and his ability to speak Spanish has enabled him to pick the brains of some of blind football's top coaches in their native language.

His squad includes French-born captain Charles E. Catherine, who is also a classical pianist, Ahmed J. Shareef, who was brought to the US from Iraq for medical treatment after he lost his sight and part of his right arm in a bombing when he was seven, and star striker Alvaro Mora Arellano, who was born in Mexico. 

“I think that diversity helps us,” Mora Arellano, 38, said, "because the team is a real representation of what the country is. There is acceptance of that diversity, so we are very united.  

“We all have different traditions but (we have) a common goal to represent the country and compete.”

Arellano lost his sight to cancer aged three but grew up playing football on his grandmother's patio with the help and encouragement of his cousins. 

“When I attended a residential school for the blind in Mexico City, they would wrap a plastic bag around the ball so we could hear it,” he said.  

“It was then, surrounded by people who had the same condition, that I realised I could play competitive sport. We would make little teams and play matches.” 

After moving to the US, Mora Arellano played goalball, another team sport played by athletes with vision impairments, “only because my friends used to play goalball and, like football, I could scream when I scored a goal.” 

 He attended his first US Association of Blind Athletes (USABA) soccer clinic in 2019, two years after Los Angeles was awarded the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

Making history at LA28

Mora Arellano made history by scoring the US national team's first international goal - against Canada in March 2023 in a 1-0 victory - and two more in a 3-0 victory against the same opposition days later. He has been a key player in the team ever since. 

“It's very special for me because this opportunity came late,” he said. “I thought I was too old, but you never know. 

“This is an opportunity now for me to shine, participate in the sport I love. Also, I feel honoured to represent the US, but also to be one of the players who is promoting the sport around the country, making blind people aware that there is another sport they can learn about and play if they want to. I take my position as a role model seriously.”

Make no mistake, though, the US team don't intend to just make up the numbers on home soil. They have regular training camps at the US Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, are playing in more and more tournaments, and have even visited Alamitos Beach, venue for blind football at LA28. 

“We stood on the sand, and told them (the players), 'This is where we are going to be playing',” head coach Polanco said.  

“I looked out into the ocean and thought 'in two years, I'm going to be here, and the crowd is going to be chanting U-S-A'. It was an awesome feeling. There were tears. 

“Winning is everything in the US with no exceptions, so I want them to get small tastes of what it will be like. 

“I would be lying if I told you we're going to go out and win gold; our plan is to go out and show everybody that we can compete with the best, that we're going to be a powerhouse by 2032 when we will have to qualify to compete.”

For now, though, there is another big football tournament taking place: the FIFA World Cup 2026. Mora Arellano cheered for "both" the USA and Mexico, but the two teams exited in the round of 16.

Polanco says England are his 'dark horses'. 

Come LA28, USA might carry a similar tag.

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