Kickers players launching the nation's first soccer league for athletes with intellectual disabilities

The big picture: Project Inspire is from last season's Kickers midfielders João Gomiero and Nil Vinyals, who looked to a seven-year-old Spanish league with the same mission, LALIGA Genuine, as the model for the one they're creating here.

• The players, who are friends and roommates, came to the U.S. about a decade ago, Gomiero from Brazil and Vinyals from Spain, to play college soccer before moving up to the pros, they tell Axios.
• They also each have experiences working with people with disabilities, Gomiero through Special Olympics and Vinyals back home in Barcelona with a LALIGA team in the Kickers off-season.

But it was their work with RVAccess — a Kickers program that allows kids with disabilities to learn soccer — that inspired them to create the dedicated U.S. league.

• Through RVAccess, the teammates met the Kickers' self-described biggest fan, a 13-year-old with Down syndrome who regularly asked them when he could have a turn playing professional soccer.
• The founders realized they wanted to find a way for him — and all athletes with different abilities — to have that opportunity.
• Project Inspire was born.

How it works: Right now, the all-gender league is in the preliminary stages, Vinyals tells Axios. Their goal is to launch a pilot season in August with the first official season taking place in 2026.

• Players must be 16 or older, have an intellectual disability and meet minimum soccer skills benchmarks set by Special Olympics.

• The structure will be similar to LALIGA. Athletes will be affiliated with teams in established professional soccer leagues, like USL, which the Kickers play in, or MLS, the largest in the U.S. There's already interest within the leagues and conversations are ongoing, Gomiero tells Axios.
• They also plan to start small, as LALIGA did, with just four teams; the match schedule will be structured around weekends.

But the most critical part of the league for Gomiero and Vinyals is creating the opportunity for the athletes to be treated with the same respect and professionalism all professional players deserve, they tell Axios.

• "This isn't recreational. This is a league. A competitive league and they will be treated like athletes [for some] for the first time in their lives," Vinyals says.

What's next: To learn more about Project Inspire or if you're an athlete, coach, official or volunteer looking to get involved, visit projectinspireusa.org.