When most football fans think ‘green’, they picture eco-kits or carbon-offset PR campaigns. But the real potential for genuine change runs through the academies. Youth development hubs like Barcelona’s La Masia and Ajax’s De Toekomst aren’t just producing the next generation of football geniuses…they’re learning to train them sustainably.
As the climate crisis collides with football’s social influence, academies are quietly emerging as football’s secret green weapon, embedding environmental education and infrastructure that could reshape the game.
Barcelona’s La Masia has long been lauded for cultivating world-class players and a coherent footballing identity. Less discussed, but increasingly important, is how the club’s youth system is beginning to integrate sustainability into its ethos.
While detailed environmental metrics about La Masia are scarce, the broader club have partnered with the World Wildlife Fund to promote conservation efforts within their academy setting.
Ajax’s famed De Toekomst academy complex is similarly striving to become a training environment that naturally aligns with environmental awareness. In its 2021 renovations, the club added modern energy infrastructure, water recycling systems and digital learning spaces that not only deliver education in payment and performance, but also permit real-time monitoring of energy use, consumption and waste.
While these upgrades aren’t literally solar panels sprouting over every rooftop or pitch, they reflect a broader commitment to embedding sustainability into practice, blurring the boundary between player, place and planet.
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The English model is following suit. Arsenal have partnered with Football for Future to deliver climate education at academy level, including workshops demonstrating how football contributes to carbon emissions and how stadium operations – like waste reduction and renewable energy – can reduce impact.
From touring the Emirates Stadium’s renewable energy installations to seeing how single-use plastics are managed, players gain observational context rather than canned slogans. As the club says, these sessions help develop better people, not just better footballers.
Chris Thurston, the player care manager at the Gunners’ Hale End academy, emphasised that in these academy workshops, young players truly connected climate change to football.
“It has been a great opportunity for the academy players to learn more about some of the great work that Arsenal already does at the Emirates Stadium including methods to reduce waste and using renewable energy sources amongst others,” he said.
“This commitment to action and education is integral to how Arsenal acts to reduce our environmental impact.”
Last year, Crystal Palace brought Football for Future in to work with their under-16 academy group as part of a broader Green Football Weekend initiative. Workshops prompted conversations on climate change’s real-world impact, from cancelled local games caused by extreme weather to the dramatic upheavals of global tournaments shifting dates.
Academy players were invited to envision football’s environmental footprint and even propose mitigation measures. This reflects an emerging mindset: that football’s communities – especially the young – can meaningfully contribute to sustainability planning.
And then there’s Forest Green Rovers, not so much academy prestige but plenty of global environmental notoriety.
The appropriately nicknamed Green Army guided Ascent Soccer in Malawi on setting up an academy that would be not only a sporting institution but a Green Leadership Academy, merging education with sustainable infrastructure, local materials, solar power and resource stewardship. The model demonstrates how football education and environmental responsibility can converge vertically through infrastructure design, curriculum and ethical mission.
Academies matter because they’re repeat microcosms: they shape dietary attitudes (such as plant-based meals), transport norms, waste habits and resource use behaviours among adolescents, embedding values for life. These young players become adults whose decisions – on consumption, travel and career choices – carry not just sporting weight but cultural influence.
Tactically and financially, academies also offer the sustainability advantage of producing homegrown talent. Clubs that develop technically adept players via low-carbon youth pipelines rely less on international recruitment, costly scouting and player transport. When Barcelona, Ajax, Arsenal or Crystal Palace promote academy graduates, there’s a carbon dividend – less travel, less processing and less immersive consumption.
There are also measurable wins. Arsenal claim that the academy program with Football for Future has helped reduced plastic usage across youth teams and reduced food waste; Crystal Palace’s workshops coincided with installation of solar panels across the academy site and the planting of more than 100 trees.
Certainly, hurdles remain: not every club has the budget or vision to retrofit dorms or pitch irrigation systems in carbon-smart ways. But the trajectory is clear. When clubs align youth education with environmental responsibility, the ripple effects extend beyond the field. Players carry that ethos into senior locker rooms and eventually to global platforms.
Youth academies stand ready to be football’s unsung eco-heroes. Rather than flashy fan campaigns or one-off plant-based pop-ups, this approach is structural and systemic. It’s teaching sustainability through operations and localised action. If the next generation of stars can think beyond their own boots – toward recycling streams, diets, travel emissions and community engagement – they might just transform the sport from a polluter to a promoter. And that’s a game worth changing.
Harnessing these quiet green currents within academies may not win trophies tomorrow, but it’s one of the few scalable, repeatable and culture-shifting ways football clubs can build for a brighter future on and off the pitch.
To learn more about Pledgeball and how you can pledge to help your club shoot up the sustainability standings, visit Pledgeball.org.
