Matt Greenwood: “The accessible sport community is collaborative around the world”
On 13 June 2018, it was announced that the 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup would be heading to North America with the tournament split across Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
While one of the leading countries in women’s football, Canada’s men’s team were officially ranked just inside the top 100 nations and had not qualified for a World Cup since 1986.
Fast forward to 2026 and the male soccer landscape has changed dramatically – an established professional league, qualification to the men’s World Cup in Qatar in 2022, and players becoming household names.
Canada is days away from hosting a World Cup match for the first time, a milestone moment that many will hope is the start of a successful tournament, on and off the field.
But for people like Matt Greenwood, who are actively creating accessible football opportunities, it’s much more than that. It’s a reminder of why their work is so important.
“We throw around the words equity, inclusion, and accessibility a lot,” he said. “From my perspective, football’s the best game in the world, the most accessible, most popular, so why wouldn’t we want more people to play and open the door a little bit wider?
“It almost sometimes feels like we’re keeping it a secret and keeping the doors closed when we know there are people out there in our community that can be involved.
“That could be people with a disability in a playing, coaching, officiating, administrating role, but it could also be women and girls, it could be the LGBT community. Particularly here in Canada, there’s strong focus on Indigenous communities and Indigenous sport.
“Opening that door for more people to have that experience – the joy that we get from watching and playing this game – the better.”
This was Matt’s motivation behind starting Soccability Canada. He had moved to Canada in 2006 after working for the Northamptonshire FA in England, and noticed that there was huge potential for education and growth.
“In England, I saw what a strong message the Football Association had integrated into all the counties when it came to disability soccer. When I moved here, there was a lack of that guidance and leadership.
“Soccability Canada started formally in 2020, but prior to that, it had been something I’d been working away at in the background more seriously since about 2016, and I started to see some things happen in the accessible sport landscape.
“I went back and forth several times with Canada Soccer to say this is something that needs to be on the radar; this is something that’s really important that can help grow the game.
“Now we’ve got to a nice relationship with the organisation where, if inquiries do come into them, they signpost to us and then we’re able to help guide, whether it’s a parent, a coach, a club, when it comes to their programming.”
Growing the Soccability Canada identity in this way has been a big step in starting conversations around accessibility in football; intentional and impactful connections that lead to change.
“We have a lot of questions, usually from parents saying, ‘I’d love to find out where my local programme is’. Once we find out geographically where they’re located in the country, we can signpost them to an established programme.
“And if it’s not an established programme, then we’ll happily connect them with a local club. We’ll show the club the right direction, that this is something they need to do.
“From a coaching perspective, when I deliver workshops and we talk about disability soccer, there are so many similarities to how you would typically adjust sessions for stronger players, developing players, the size of the group.
“There’s a long-term athlete development model here in Canada, where you’d focus the attention on each of the players as best as possible to ensure they are challenged and also enjoy the session. You do the exact same thing with a group with a range of different disabilities, a range of different needs on the field.
“Having coaches see it from that perspective, to push and grow their mindsets, is another reason why this is such a great thing to get involved in.”
While Canada is typically associated around the world with prowess in winter sports, particularly ice hockey, involvement in football has skyrocketed in recent years.
At the start of 2026, Canada Soccer announced football was the country’s most popular sport, with 50 percent of the youth population taking to the field.
“Particularly in the last eight to 10 years, the men’s team needed a lot of work to make it into a viable product that people would actually be interested in watching,” continued Matt.
“During John Herdman’s [former Canada men’s national team head coach] time here, he helped find fantastic talent like Alphonso Davies, Jonathan David. Now it’s a good team to watch, and that’s helped grow awareness of the sport in Canada so it’s taken more seriously.
“Then in parallel to that, there’s been a strong push on the accessibility agenda around making workplaces more accessible, public transport, the way that we serve people coming into a building as customers.
“There’s definitely work to be done to grow inclusive programmes across clubs. One of our visions at Soccability Canada is to have an accessible programme in every community so the parents aren’t having to track miles just to go and find that place to play.
“Ideally, if clubs work together, they could have their training sessions on different nights of the week, so kids could potentially register with two, three or four clubs and get lots and lots of soccer to play.”
Soccability Canada is now involved in loads of events taking place at home and around the world, from raising awareness on the busy streets of Toronto, to supporting Canada’s women’s blind soccer team as they head to Brazil for an international tournament in September.
Matt hopes the upcoming World Cup inspires more people to look at the game with a wider lens.
“Through Toronto hosting, there are going to be four legacy turf fields, which will be installed in four key neighbourhoods across the city.
“Soccability Canada will be partnering with the City of Toronto on the opening of those fields and delivering an accessible demonstration to the local clubs there.
“Hopefully we can promote community use of these fields, so it’s not just the competitive kids that get onto them, but to encourage clubs to think about other parts of the community that should also be sharing that space.
“We all need to align our messages around the sport and how powerful it can be, growing the message that football, or soccer, really is for everybody.
“The accessible sport community is collaborative around the world. I wouldn’t think twice about reaching out to the Football Association in England or my leads in Argentina, or Japan, or wherever they might be, because I know they’ll give me guidance.
“We all want to move this sport forward, raise awareness, grow the quality of our programmes, and we can benefit from the fact that there are other parts of the world that are so far ahead of us.
“There’s a lot of positives around what we want to do, and what we can do, in the future.”
