Wooden stadium, recycled uniform and vegan food for the fans: this is the greenest soccer team in the world

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The

t-shirts

are made with textile fiber made from coffee grounds. The pitch proclaims its "pesticide-free" status. The stadium is 100% supplied with renewable energy and no meat is served at the food stalls. Fans proudly shout "Vegan, Vegan!" and children run around signs with the slogan

.

We are in The New Lawn, the home of the Forest Green Rovers, the first football team certified by the UN as carbon neutral and ratified by FIFA as the

the world.

To the environmental success this year has been added the sporting triumph, and there we have the team perched with 31 points to first place in the English League 2 (equivalent to the Spanish third division).

Dale Vince, founder of the Ecotricity company and owner of the Green Britain Group team

"We have shown that you can do things differently and win,"

boasts its president, Dale Vince, founder of the renewable energy company Ecotricity, which rescued the team from ruin in 2010 and embarked on a transition unprecedented ecological and sporty. "That is the challenge we face: we have to make the alternative not only as good, but even better, both in sport and in the face of climate change."

"I always liked football, although I took over the reins of this club by a happy accident," recalls Vince, who continues to play as a fan at 60 and

(the English second division)

We spoke to him over a generous salad in the

area

of the New Lawn, the old stadium in bucolic Nailsworth (6,000 inhabitants) that will soon give way to the futuristic

.

View of the wooden stadium

"Call it if you want the stadium of our dreams, which can be expanded to 15,000 spectators.

will be supplied

by solar panels and wind turbines and will be flanked by more than 500 trees and two kilometers of bushes. We want a

technological and environmental innovation

grow around it

. And we want to continue winning games, of course:

. "

In neighboring Stroud, the birthplace of the Extinction Rebellion movement, Dale Vince greets passersby on posters that credit him as the most popular face of Green Britain. With his long rebellious hair (he dropped out of school at 15 and spent a season in Spain in his errant days as a

), he has been doing things "differently" all his life.

Ecotricity was born out of his passion for wind turbines, long before the UK gained fame from the wind Saudi Arabia. For years he pursued the

of the electric car (Nemesis project) and from there he went to the "electrolineras". Now they are embarking on the generation of gas with grass, and in the manufacture of "zero impact diamonds" from CO2 captured from the atmosphere (Skydiamond). His next endeavor is a domestic treatment plant capable of recycling all the water in a house in 24 hours.

But his free time is dedicated to the green I love you of the Forest Green Rovers, who have allowed him to go much further than he ever thought with his message:

from that incredible platform that is the most popular sport in the world.

"Things are changing and football cannot be left out of the game," certifies Welsh coach Rob Edwards, 38, who wore the Aston Villa and Wolves jersey and played at times with Gareth Bale himself.

"The world is going in one direction and we are modestly leading the way. But

A carbon neutral match in La Premier

Chelsea and Tottenham in fact played in September the first carbon neutral match of the Premier, sponsored by the Sky channel, one of the sponsors of COP26.

However, the initiative lacks the pull of renowned athletes such as Hector Bellerín, the Arsenal side (on loan to Betis) who became a supporter and partner of Forest Green Rovers.

Forest Green Rovers players during trainingG.BG

Coach Rob Edwards anticipates how

, and how all the small changes are having an impact on the daily lives of his pupils: "Almost everyone has switched to the electric car.

Everything you do you think twice to see if it fits into the ethics of the club. And on top of that we win games with our attacking football and with a handful of young players with great talent. What more can we ask for? ? "

Dom Bernard, a 24-year-old defender, has yet to fully convert to veganism but acknowledges that his environmental awareness has skyrocketed since he joined Forest Green Rovers two years ago: "At this club, we have all set the bar very high. We have set out to scale the football pyramid and we know that there is a very exciting project behind it. We are the clearest example of an ecological transition in football, and that connects us in a special way with the fans. "

Vegan burgerG.BG

On the field of Forest Green Rovers, in their game with Swindon Town, the typical Fly Emirates advertisements give way to unusual claims such as

or

At the entrance to the bleachers, a sign warns

and in the Devils Kitchen cafeteria, Henry Meer struggles at rest between some vegan meatballs or a sweet potato burger.

"What do you think?" He asks his son Kevin, dressed in his team's "distressed" green T-shirt.

"We didn't have these kinds of dilemmas before," confesses Henry.

"Then we only ate dogs and we consoled ourselves if the team did not lose. Now we come to see them win."

The last goal of the 'petrodollar'

It was the last and sounded goal of the

: the purchase of Newcastle United by an investment group led by the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Saudi Arabia (PIC).

After years of resistance, the English authorities have decided to look the other way and consent to the controversial

of Saudi money on the beautiful game.

Decarbonize football?

This is the great taboo that nobody talks about.

The relationship between black gold and the gold ball has grown in the last two decades.

, it lends itself to washing its image and consolidating its international projection with the ownership of clubs, television bombing and advertising in stadiums and on shirts (Fly Emirates, already you know).

With an estimated capital of 360,000 million euros, coming mainly from the sale of oil, the PIC of Saudi Arabia can now make Newcastle the richest club in the world, ahead of Manchester City of Sheikh Mansour of the United Arab Emirates and the PSG of Paris of Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar (where the 2022 World Cup is celebrated by the way).

Newcastle, second to last in the Premier League, aspire to regain the fame acquired a century ago, when they won three consecutive leagues.

PIC Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan will become the "non-executive" president of the club.

Despite the guarantees about the separation of powers, everything indicates that the true owner of Newcastle will actually be Mohamed Bin Salmán, the all-powerful crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, also has the

of football in Europe

in its hands

, as UEFA's partner in the Champions League and sponsor of teams such as Zenit in Saint Petersburg, Shalke 04 in Germany or Red Star in Belgrade. .

It is estimated that Gazprom controls 15% of the world's gas reserves and a significant amount of oil.

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea, has large interests in the fossil fuel industry through Evraz, a company specializing in steel and coal mining.

, thanks to his fleet of eight yachts and three private jets.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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