MÉS QUE UN CLUB: Veganism, Green Energy and the Story of Forest Green Rovers F.C.
As Barcelona capitulates in the realisation that principle (and Mr. Lionel Messi), not pure profit, births success, orangesaint. takes a look at Forest Green Rovers — the world’s greenest and first ever vegan football club.
It is a pithy maxim, but one worth knowing, that the poverty of dignity is always more humiliating than the poverty of money.
The famous joke goes that Mr. Xavi Hernández ‘Xavi’ Creus would interrupt the dying embers of Richard III’s opening monologue to preach the gospel of tiki taka and lambast the eponymous villain as a Mourinhista.
This type of arrogance, though, befits the Spaniard. Barcelona circa 2008-2012 best encapsulated the Catalan spirit — a joyous exhibition of teamwork, an ecstatic irreverence to the status quo (here, that the physically diminutive player does not a champion make) and a gleeful subversion of it.
It is the eschewing of these ideals that has led to the current turmoil at the Camp Nou. To be "mes que un club," one needs to astutely nourish and replenish the club’s sole breadwinner — football. Then, and only then, comes the romanticism of it all. That neither the ball nor its symbolism is of particular importance to a Barcelona hierarchy beset by power struggles is a damning indictment of the club that was once the gold standard. They may (for now) have the wherewithal to spend profligately on Messrs. Antoine Griezmann and Phillipe Coutinho, but there certainly is no dignity left in Catalonia.
The reverse is true in Nailsworth, where Forest Green Rovers have steadfastly picked up the mantle Barcelona so carelessly discarded.
The League Two outfit were founded in 1889 and have been historically humble in their footballing success, only being close to the Football League in the last twenty years. Their 1982 FA Vase triumph accounts for the glory years (if glory years are to be measured in silverware; Socrates and Zico taking part in a more global competition that same year would argue otherwise).
It is in the form of Ecotricity environmentalist Mr. Dale Vince that the club has become more than a club; at least more than the weekly coliseum of relief and freedom that most football clubs are to their people.
The homeless comedian at a Saturday night open mic night in L.A. will pithily opine that the best humour contains the best truth. After Forest Green earnt promotion to League Two, Mr. Bob Hunt famously bellowed, “Cheltenham, Swindon, Newport. You are going to eat hummus next season because Forest Green Rovers are in the Football League.”
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Mr. Orson Welles is said to have dryly remarked, "Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."
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It’s funny because it’s true. Forest Green are the only sports club globally to be recognized by the United Nations as carbon neutral. That the team bus and lawn mower (the “Mowbot.” You would too, wouldn’t you?) are fully electric, there are electric car charging facilities at the stadium and the grass on the pitch is free from pesticide help bolster the status. So do the team shirts and shin pads being made out of biodegradable bamboo and the bathroom soap being plant-based and eco-friendly.
Much of the energy used by the New Lawn, home to the team since 2006, comes from solar panels on its roof. Nearby wind turbines built by Vince’s Ecotricity, along with water reservoir technology that allows for water crashing onto the pitch to be stored and reused, have helped Forest Green transcend football.
Mr. Orson Welles is said to have dryly remarked, “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”
Everybody eats. Everybody argues over what to eat too. For every Churchill who caused the Bengal famine of 1943, there is the First War of Kappel, stopped, it is said, by soup. That Sainsbury’s ad stopped the Great War (for a day and a football match, at least) with a biscuit. But don’t you dare offer Americans tea.
Which is why the decision to turn the entire club towards veganism has fuelled such vociferous debate (and led to the aforementioned hummus).
Vince opined correctly that changing the match day menu from meat pies, burgers and a pint to plant-based substitutes (but still a pint) would be a new and less than subtle way of pushing through his message of green living and green existing. It enables the Forest Green community to use its platform as a football club to address wider issues. It shows that a football club can be run in a different way, to be cognisant of the football but also of the issues that affect fans.
It isn’t just about the environmental reasons, of which there are many (many). Pragmatically too, the club’s firm belief that players shouldn’t be consuming red meat is backed by detailed supporting statistics and analyses off the pitch — in terms of boosts to stamina, player recovery and injury prevention — and better results on it.
As the famous Anton Ego critique goes, “The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.” A CNN report from 2019 briefly highlights the loss of old fans who’d rather a bacon roll than a vegan pasta on match day. A casual treehugger remark is never far away either.
It’s also why away stadiums often ring out in gleeful schadenfreude at a tackled Forest Green player, “You dirty vegan b*****d, you’re eating our grass.”
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Bellerin said in a glowing statement, “Forest Green Rovers prove to clubs who say they don't have resources to be sustainable – that it is possible...people have a universal love of football, so there's no better industry to promote sustainability – and what we can do as football supporters to be more environmentally conscious.”
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That the club exists to be mocked is a miracle of sorts. When Vince purchased the club in 2010, he saved them from relegation out of the erstwhile Conference and financial extinction. And so it speaks volumes of the closeness with which people identify with their food (indeed, food can reveal more about a person than interrogation ever could) that Forest Green have gone from professional obscurity to professional stability and not wholly fantastical aspirations under Vince’s stewardship, but there is still lingering resentment. The owner’s outright support of Extinction Rebellion – saying he would accept protestors blockading access to the New Lawn – hasn’t helped to quash the minority backlash.
But the new becomes established only if it moves forward. It’s why, in 2017, the club became the first football team to be awarded the Vegan Trademark from the Vegan Society. And Forest Green can now boast supporters clubs in more than 50 countries.
That the Arsenal right-back Hector Bellerin is its newest shareholder speaks volumes of the effectiveness of the club’s efforts and the attention garnered by them. Bellerin said in a glowing statement, “Forest Green Rovers prove to clubs who say they don’t have resources to be sustainable – that it is possible…people have a universal love of football, so there’s no better industry to promote sustainability – and what we can do as football supporters to be more environmentally conscious.”
To paraphrase the typically pragmatic Orwell, if you want a picture of the future, imagine a fascist hulking, fascist soldier of a carbon dioxide cloud suffocating a human face — forever. That the environmental future of the planet, if one is not being too grandiose hinges more on large scale, pan-government and pan-nationality schemes than individuals turning off lights is a prudent statement, if not one wholly devoid of debate.
Football engages a thousand eyes and a thousand hands, laying the perfect platform for messaging that transcends the sport.
The future is the club’s to shape, then. Forest Green have aided the United Nations in drafting the Sports for Action Initiative, aimed at stimulating discourse around climate change amongst sports outfits the world over.
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Mark Cooper's team likes the ball on the deck, fizzing and whizzing between Forest Green feet. The football resembles its surroundings – pretty. The Championship is beckoning.”
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Closer to home, the club’s new proposed stadium, Eco Park, hopes to be the greenest stadium of its kind when fully realised. At 5000 seats, the stadium’s true draw comes from what it is made out of — wood.
The Zaha Hadid-designed construct, resembling a 21st century take on the Roman coliseum, aims to do away with the worrying statistic that more than 75% of a stadium’s carbon footprint comes from the materials it is built with. The 500 trees and 1.8km of new hedgerows surrounding Eco Park will only bolster the green message. Flippantly, one hopes Will Grigg doesn’t swing by.
The actual football’s half decent as well. With the club only being promoted to League Two at the conclusion of the 2016-17 season, its stability in the fourth tier of English football is commendable. Mark Cooper’s team likes the ball on the deck, fizzing and whizzing between Forest Green feet. The football resembles its surroundings — pretty. The Championship is beckoning.
“Game after game after game,” goes the stirring Scottish voice that famously opens FIFA ’06, “I realise now what’s most important in my life — football.” It is a pithy maxim, but one worth knowing, that football is about more than just football. For all the personal rags to riches stories, Mr. Xavi Hernández ‘Xavi’ Creus is testament to the fact that a team can change the seemingly sanctified and immovable air of society. It is no coincidence that an uptick in Catalan pride and renewed calls for the region’s independence coincided with the staggering success of that great Barcelona side at the turn of the past decade.
It is telling that the overwhelming criticism of the club’s humbling at the hands of Bayern Munich didn’t have as much to do with the staggering scoreline (8-2!) as it did with the loss of identity. Barcelona understood the game in a certain way and played it in a certain way. Camp Nou and La Masia propagated a football that intentionally was a metaphor for life. Object above self. The greater good. Humility. Respect. For a short while, it wasn’t foolhardy romance to believe in those marketing buzzwords. Mes que un club indeed.
Which is why it is all the more disappointing to see them become mere buzzwords again. But in Nailsworth, there is hope for the foolhardy romantic — that a certain way of understanding football will lead to a certain way of understanding life.
While Premier League giants swagger with their silverware, Forest Green measure success in a way that goes beyond football. Forest Green Rovers are the new Barcelona. Mes que un club indeed. Just try their ‘Q’-Pies.