Hector Bellerin has announced that he has become a shareholder in League Two side Forest Green Rovers.
In an exclusive interview with The Athletic, the Arsenal right-back reveals he has taken out a minority holding in the club, nestled in the Cotswolds, to help support and develop their environmental and ethical innovations.
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Under chairman Dale Vince, Forest Green have been recognised by FIFA as “the greenest football club in the world”. In 2015, they became the world’s first vegan club, serving plant-based food to fans and players alike. More recently, the United Nations certified them as the first carbon-neutral football club.
Bellerin, who follows a vegan diet and is a passionate advocate for sustainability and social responsibility, tells The Athletic: “Dale has revolutionised that football club — they’re vegan, they’re eco-friendly, they have a neutral carbon footprint. They’re a clear example of how to run a football club in our times so I wanted to be a part of it and offer my help to them in whichever way I could.”
Bellerin’s investment is permitted by the FA as his shareholding is below the threshold at which it would be deemed a conflict of interest. He does not expect to be immediately involved in the day-to-day running of the club but will collaborate with them directly on a number of projects in the coming years. “I just felt it was the right thing to start a relationship,” says the 25-year-old. “I’m going to help bring awareness to what they’re doing — helping marketing, helping PR, and helping create a network.
“I wanted to help in any way I could — they’re a massive example and they’re in League Two. They’re getting bigger and bigger every day. Imagine if they get to the Championship or something.
“It feels good to feel part of their family.”
Bellerin’s investment in Forest Green combines his love of football with his passion for environmentalism. He is part of a generation of young athletes determined to use their platform for good.
“I used to get a lot of stick for the stuff I was doing off the pitch,” he says. It has not stopped him. When football returned after the UK’s lockdown ended, Bellerin committed to planting 3,000 trees for every Arsenal win in the remainder of 2019-20. Working with non-profit organisation One Tree Planted, Bellerin’s pledge and the support of fans saw 50,000 trees planted in the Amazon rainforest.
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He recently launched a podcast, More Than A Footballer, in which guests such as former Arsenal midfielder Mathieu Flamini, Norway and Sampdoria’s Morten Thorsby and ex-England international Alex Scott have discussed the environment, social justice, racism and other progressive topics.
“I always said that doing my stuff off the pitch is something that recharges and helps me play,” Bellerin says. “You always hear about these athletes that are so obsessive about the game, like Michael Jordan. I was thinking, ‘Am I the only football player who feels like this?’
“It was great to see this is what happens for so many people. We can broaden the picture of a football player — we’re not just the goals and the cars and the houses. We all have a passion away from the game, and I’m not talking about making clothes or playing an instrument, I’m talking about something deeper than that. I’m talking about the injustices of the world that we live in nowadays.”
Being an environmentalist and a modern Premier League footballer can require a degree of cognitive dissonance. In 2015, Bellerin’s club Arsenal were fiercely criticised for taking a 14-minute flight to Norwich. Last year, Bellerin joined his team-mates in flying almost 3,000 miles to Baku for the Europa League final — a fixture in which he wasn’t fit to play. “The way the world is built nowadays, there are going to be many times when you have to compromise,” says Bellerin. “It’s very hard to live a carbon-neutral life today. You can be more conscious of the choices that you make, but it’s also about what we have available.
“A lot of the time we blame society, we blame ourselves: ‘We’re using too much plastic, we’re flying a lot’. But they’re not giving us another choice. We need to not just push society to do better, but push big industries to give us another choice.”
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Bellerin believes the time for advocacy and action is now, and his affiliation with Forest Green will help foreground an issue that is becoming increasingly urgent. A study from earlier this year, explored in the Tifo video below, showed that of the 92 teams in England’s top four divisions, 23 can expect partial or total annual flooding of their stadiums by 2050.
“I watched that video and I thought it was amazing, the perspective it gives as to how it affects our game,” says Bellerin. “Politicians always put a deadline of 2050, 30 years away. These politicians aren’t even going to be here anymore. Truly the problem is now.
“For football fans, when they see the video that you’re talking about, and they see, ‘Oh, my football club is going to be flooded, they’re not going to be able to play there, I’ll have to canoe to go the stadium’, they realise that it is a big issue.
“Lots of people live for football. They wake up every morning thinking of the game at the weekend. When you give these people the real information of what could happen, I think that can change their mind and lead to making more conscious choices in their life.”
Bellerin fears the coronavirus outbreak means sanitisation and economic imperatives are taking priority over saving the planet. “Definitely we will lose some progress,” says Bellerin. “Look at the amount of masks and gloves that you can see in the sea — some of these things are single-use and then that’s it. We’re trying to solve one problem while we’re creating another. It’s easy to wear a mask that you wash when you get home, but sometimes I feel like we’re too lazy to even do that.”
Nevertheless, he retains some optimism that the pandemic could force a different perspective that could bring about meaningful change. “During the pandemic, we saw a lot of people started seeing the stars in London, which they had never seen before,” says Bellerin. “We realised that a lot of the things we do day-to-day, the way we consume… we took a step back and we realised that we can have a life without all these things.
“All those reward systems in our brain that we get buying something new or going on Instagram — we were getting them actually by being with our family or talking to the neighbour or applauding at eight o’clock on a Thursday (to show support to those working for the NHS).
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“I’m a big believer that every negative situation brings a positive one somehow. It’s very hard to talk about positivity in this situation because many people lost people in their family, but I think the pandemic also did that.
“It’s true that we’re not meant to live life as we were living it — waking up at 6am in the morning and going straight into your emails, into your phone, and not even paying attention to your children while you’re having breakfast because you’re so busy thinking about your next meeting.
“So many people have told me that working from home has made them appreciate things differently. They’re getting to know their children. One physio that I know, he was saying that he couldn’t connect with his son — it was very hard for him to understand him and stuff. And then after one week of lockdown, he was like, ‘We’re best mates’. He realised that he had never paid attention to what his son wanted, or why he was behaving in a certain way.
“In many ways, in terms of community and consciousness and all these things, we’ve definitely gained an insight that there’s so many things we do in life that we don’t really need to do. I feel like the pandemic has given us the opportunity to actually live a slow life, and somehow realise that you can be happy doing that. Hopefully, we can take that with us because I feel like if we don’t take anything from everything that’s gone on, as a species we’re actually dumber than we thought we were.”
Bellerin is one of several footballers leading a drive for social change. Flamini’s GF Chemicals company is focused on finding sustainable alternatives to oil-based products. Sampdoria midfielder Thorsby is in the process of launching We Play Green foundation to help clubs and players reduce their carbon footprint. In June, Marcus Rashford helped persuade the government to extend free school meals for children during the summer holidays — and has since called for more action to tackle food poverty.
“Marcus is a clear example of someone who went through that when he was young and was like, ‘No, I don’t want that to happen anymore’,” says Bellerin. “He has the platform, he has the money.
“He is the clear example of what a football player, an athlete, a celebrity — whatever you want to call it — can do when you have passion and the drive to change the world. If you change one family’s life, you’ve changed the world. If you make life better for three people, that’s crazy. The fact he’s been able to do that for many millions across the UK… I have so much respect for what he did.”
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Bellerin is not only inspired by those other pioneers, he’s inspiring younger athletes around him too. “I remember Bukayo Saka asked me, ‘Why are you doing the tree stuff?’” says Bellerin. “It was such an innocent question in a way, but I was like, ‘There’s this deforestation stuff going on, and people over there don’t have much money, so if we can plant trees we’re helping two problems at the same time: the people that are there can work and can earn a fair living, and we’re also we’re helping the Amazon to reforest’. And he was like, ‘Oh right…well, how can I donate?’
“Younger people are seeing that we are not only footballers anymore. We’re all people, we’re all human, we all have a right to give an opinion.
“I really hope there are other players and other athletes that start using their passions and their platforms — we all fight different battles, whether it’s the environment or child poverty. We all need to support each other and that’s the way that we move forward.”
Bellerin’s conviction and eloquence leads to the inevitable question of whether he would follow Rashford’s lead in campaigning for changes in government policy.
“One of the most important things for me is that every time you speak about something, you’ve got to know what you’re talking about. Especially today with social media!” he laughs. “Every single guy is a coach — I have three million coaches after every game, telling me what I’ve done wrong. The truth is a lot of those people know about football, but they don’t really really know what is going on.
“The same is true with climate change. We can all talk about climate change, but if you want to do something, you need to have education and information. That’s why Mathieu (Flamini) is so good. I have the information and education from my research, but this guy has actually done the real work and he can take it to politicians, same as Morten (Thorsby) in Italy. I really want to do that.
“Planting trees is obviously amazing, helping Forest Green, but to go and talk to the politicians I need to have a plan — and I need people to help me get that plan. I don’t want to just get into a boardroom and say, ‘We need to be green’. This is something I want to do in the future. But I’m someone who, with everything I do in my life, if I do something I’m going to do it 100 per cent.
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“If I go to that boardroom I want to come out of that boardroom knowing that if I propose something there it’s going to happen. I just feel like I need to know more, even more, to be able to make that happen.”
Given Bellerin’s extraordinary passion for his cause, few would bet against him achieving just that.