As the FIFA World Cup 2026 shifts into high gear, soccer in North America is riding an unprecedented high. In Burlington, Vermont, that energy is taking on a distinctly local and purpose-driven form.
Just a few years after its founding, Vermont Green Football Club has already made a name for itself in American soccer. Competing in USL League Two – a preprofessional summer league with 144 teams – the club captured national attention last year with an undefeated championship run.
The team aims to become a net-zero club, which means reducing its climate pollution to as close to zero as possible and offsetting any remaining emissions. Fans are encouraged to bike or take public transit to games, and each match highlights a local nonprofit organization.
Yale Climate Connections spoke with Vermont Green FC cofounder Patrick Infurna about the team’s mission and goals and how the community has stepped up to amplify the team’s impact.
Yale Climate Connections: Could you introduce us to your environmental mission and what inspired it?
Patrick Infurna: We were founded by a group of friends with all different backgrounds, but with the idea that we wanted to build something that was more than just celebrating the game of soccer. We wanted this to be something that had a mission and an identity and a purpose that went beyond the game. And when we did this in 2022, we always knew that to be successful and to be a club that actually mirrored and reflected the community in Vermont, it had to be something that had a purpose that went beyond the game.
For us, that was initially “How do we build a club that raises awareness of climate change?” And that evolved to something deeper with our environmental justice mission: If we’re going to address the climate crisis, we need to do it at the local level, at the human level, and we needed to build something that brought people together to discuss these issues.
YCC: Can you tell us a little bit about your work to become net zero?
Infurna: Net zero is our north star, and we’ve learned over time that it’s really a difficult task.
We started with an advantage – we’re playing at the University of Vermont in Burlington, partnering with organizations and businesses that were shooting for net zero or were B Corps themselves, and that has given us a leg up in prioritizing this. We’ve had a lot of success in our mission to educate and bring fans together on this journey of thinking more critically about everything that we do. For example, our porta-potty partner is recycling and turning human waste into fertilizer.
The typical sports experience is going to the stadium, having a drink, having a hot dog, throwing it out, and leaving. We wanted to transform that and encourage fans to be a bit more thoughtful with the food, the drinks, encouraging fans to recycle, using our staff to sort through the garbage at the end of every game to make sure things are recycled and sorted in the right way, and being an example, even if it’s a small one, to fans to say that we can be a bit better.
We’re still bound to traditional transportation when we take a bus for an away game. But when it comes to our home matches on the campus of the University of Vermont in Burlington, we encourage public transportation, and if you can bike to the game, walk to the game, use public transportation, that’s really important to us. We encourage fans to bike to every game, and we’ve partnered with Local Motion, a local organization that sets up a free bike-parking valet at every match. And if you bike to the game and use the bike valet parking, you’re automatically entered into a raffle for small prizes – water bottles, Plink hydration tablets, whatever gear that we have in – and all of our gear is made from recycled materials.
But ultimately, we’ve tried to be clear that net zero is a target that we want to achieve, while understanding that it’s not the easiest task. So for us, this process of getting to net zero has really been about that journey and in educating our fans on what they can do at the stadium and outside of the stadium to make that little bit more of an impact.
YCC: Could you talk a little bit about how you’ve integrated an anti-racism piece into your work?
Infurna: We’re working with community organizations that are addressing the climate crisis through this human lens. More people being able to enjoy and play soccer is mission-critical to us, so we’ve really tried to boost the soccer community that existed here in Burlington before our club did. We’ve had a partnership with a local Somali Bantu community association team called Juba Star FC. We’ve played games against them; we’ve supported their initiatives.
We’ve had a really excellent partnership with a group called Migrant Justice, which has been advocating for migrant farmworkers in Vermont for a long time now. And this [past] summer, our women’s team was coached by a U.S. women’s national team World Cup winner, Sam Mewis. We raffled off one of her game-worn jerseys to fans, and we raised over $6,000 for the Vermont Immigration Legal Defense Fund, a newly founded group that was making sure that we had trained and available lawyers to address immigration issues here in Vermont. And we were really proud of that partnership.
We were proud of bringing migrant justice into the mix, but the moment that brought even more pride was when the Green Mountain Bhoys, our organized independent fan base, saw that initiative and decided they were going to take it to another level. They built out their own fan campaign, and they raised [about $25,000] for the same organization.
Ultimately, whereas what a club can do may be limited in some ways, our fan base and our community have built their identity around this club, and they took it to another level. And that is success for a purpose-driven soccer team like ours.
YCC: Can you talk about some of the ways that you’re communicating these issues and getting information out to fans?
Infurna: We want to be a leader, and we want to be an example in addressing the climate crisis through the game of soccer. But we also don’t come to our fans saying that we – the Vermont Green Football Club – have all the answers. So we give multiple ways for our fans to access local partners, whether that’s tables in the concourse where people can gather information, sign petitions, get gear, things like that. We also have match-day spotlights where we’ll welcome an organization to speak at halftime.
So you’re enjoying the game, understanding that this is entertainment and it’s a community event, but basically any other spot where the game is not going on, we hope that you’re going to find information about organizations locally working on these important issues.
And we’ve sold out every game, so it’s really an engaged fan base. Some people say, “Oh, it’s halftime. Let me go get some food.” But a lot of people know that at halftime there’s the opportunity to continue engaging with the club’s mission via local partners, whether that’s Vermont Land Trust, Migrant Justice, or NOFA Vermont working in the agricultural area.
YCC: How have you seen the players engage with the mission?
Infurna: This league is for really top players who want to become professionals, and a lot of these players are focused athletes dialed in on building their careers. But we also bring in players we think will be open to the mission, and we ask all the players to engage with the mission. We’ve had a lot of success with players deciding that the community aspect of this is really important to them, and over the years we’ve had some really incredible advocates.
We don’t ask players to be experts; we don’t ask them to be perfect advocates for what we’re fighting for, but we do ask them to be open-minded. We ask them to engage as much as they possibly can. And we do little things, like the players are engaging with the youth at the King Street Center – a youth center in Burlington. They’re out at the local clubs getting involved with the community. We’ve had a lot of players in college – some of them are environmental studies majors, some of them are social work majors – and we’ve had a range of players who wanted to make being a climate advocate a part of their identity as an athlete. We say to these young men and women, “You have thousands of kids looking up to you, watching your every move. They’re watching how you carry yourself, what you say, how you speak. If you decide that you can add a little bit more to your path to be an advocate, it’s going to make an impact.”
So when an athlete decides, “I’m going to be a professional athlete, and I’m going to do it compassionately, I’m going to do it consciously,” that can go a long way.
YCC: Can you describe what it’s like at the stadium on a home game day?
Infurna: Game days at Virtue Field are really fantastic. You walk into the concourse, and you see the nonprofits tabling, you see the local food trucks, you see Ben and Jerry’s handing out free ice cream – every single Vermont Green FC game has mini-scoops of free Ben and Jerry’s for everybody. It’s a joyous occasion, and it certainly helps that our team has been really good and we win a lot of games, but I don’t think it’s just that. I think people love to get together. I think they love to celebrate being Vermonters. I think they love to celebrate our community, the city of Burlington, and the state as a whole.
We’ve been sold out of our season tickets for the last couple of seasons, and we sold out every regular-season game last year.
We have such an engaged fan base that actively cheers on the team in this visceral, vocal way. But they also know that when they do all of this, and they build this identity for the club and for the fan base, it’s an expression of this community’s pride, this team’s pride, and pride that our football club – our community – is this incredible thing on and off the field. And I think that is ultimately what people are looking for at these Vermont Green games.
And I hope this is a glimpse at a different way to approach sport anywhere in the world. We’re not the first people to attach a mission to our team, but when you can gather at a local soccer game and you feel like everything is a reflection of who you and your neighbors and your city are, I think this is what people want from sports. They don’t want to just be customers, they don’t want to just go consume athletics that they can watch on TV or on their phone or wait for the highlights. They want to have a fully engaging experience alongside their neighbors with a team that reflects and represents them. And I think that is why we’ve had sold-out games and people asking for more seats, because it’s just a good time.
And the way that people are deciding to support this team – to enjoy the game, to become obsessed with soccer, but to continue to recognize it as something that can bring people together to face larger issues – has been a testament to Vermont culture.
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