England won amputee football's inaugural Nations League in 2023. The coach who led them there just got a BEM.

Scott Rogers, a Blackpool PE teacher turned international coach, led England to its first major amputee football title in over 30 years. His BEM in the 2026 King's Birthday Honours arrived three years after the win.

England had not won a major international amputee football trophy in more than 30 years when the European Amputee Football Federation launched its Nations League competition in 2023. The inaugural tournament brought together 18 nations across four divisions, scheduled in the gaps between the World Cup and European Championship cycles. England won Division A, beat Turkey in the process, and took the title.

The man who organized that campaign was Scott Rogers. He grew up in Blackpool, worked as a physical education teacher, and built a parallel career in youth football development, including coaching stints in the academies at Blackburn Rovers and Wigan Athletic. He joined the England Amputee National Football Team’s coaching staff in 2020. He became interim head coach at the end of 2022 and was confirmed in the role permanently in 2023, the same year England won.

Turkey finished second. Poland took third. Spain fourth. Turkey had been the sport’s most successful European national program going into the tournament. England had not beaten them for the title in a very long time.

Rogers was awarded a British Empire Medal in the 2026 King’s Birthday Honours for services to disability sport.

What the Nations League is

The EAFF created its Nations League to give national teams competitive matches in years when neither the European Championship nor the World Cup is scheduled. The format divides ranked nations into divisions with promotion and relegation, so the competitive pressure runs down through the tiers, not just at the top. The 2023 inaugural edition ran across multiple European locations, with 18 nations participating.

The 2025 edition was held in Turkey and Spain. Poland won it that time; England finished third.

What this means

Amputee football rarely gets much coverage outside its own networks. That’s worth naming because it affects how coaching achievements register publicly. Rogers spent more than three years doing international-level preparation work before England won the Nations League, and the medal recognition came another three years after that. That’s a long gap between the thing happening and the institution noticing.

The BEM doesn’t change what the 2023 squad did. But for a sport that regularly struggles for visibility, having a coach’s work acknowledged in a national honours list is at least a legible signal that the achievement happened.

England’s next chance to defend or improve on the Nations League result will come in 2027.