BURLINGTON — Vermont Green Football Club are national champions.
The Green toppled Seattle-based Ballard FC, 2-1, in Saturday night’s United Soccer League Two championship game at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Thousands of fans turned out to the Green’s home stadium at the school, Virtue Field, to watch the team cap off its undefeated 2025 season with its first-ever national-level prize.
United Soccer League Two is a semi-professional, summertime competition made up largely of collegiate players. It has about 150 total teams across the country.
“Unbelievable. Unreal,” Maxi Kissel, the forward who scored the Green’s go-ahead second goal, said after the match ended. He was surrounded by at least a dozen kids, all clad in Vermont Green merchandise, who had run onto the field to get his and other players’ autographs. “I knew what I had to do — and I’m so thankful that I did it.”
Saturday’s game was deadlocked at 0-0 until just after halftime, when Vermont Green midfielder Julien Le Bourdoulous slotted home a penalty kick. Ballard then tied the game at one apiece around the one-hour mark. Both teams continued to trade chances for the next half-hour, but with the game approaching the final whistle, it looked likely to be heading to overtime.
That was until the Green won a corner kick in the match’s final moments. After the initial delivery from the corner, Kissel latched onto the end of a second bouncing cross toward the goal and pounded the ball past Ballard’s goalkeeper, sending the stadium into an eruption of cheers. The game ended shortly after.
“It was tough. That’s the best team we saw all year,” Vermont Green coach Chris Taylor said after the match. “But we knew the longer the game went on, we’d be the stronger team.”
Saturday’s win was the culmination of a dream run for Vermont Green, which is in its fourth season and has garnered international attention for its outspoken support of climate justice and other progressive social causes. The team regularly draws sellout crowds for its home games, boasting some of the highest average attendance of any similar team in the country.
After tying just three regular-season games and winning every other, the Green won its local United Soccer League Two division, the Northeast Division, in early July. Later that month, the team topped the league’s regional Eastern Conference bracket to advance to the final stages of the national playoff
Saturday’s win marks the second national championship for a Vermont-based soccer team in the past year. Last December, the University of Vermont men’s soccer team won the NCAA Division I championship, the first national collegiate title in a major sport in school history. Four UVM players were part of the Vermont Green team that won Saturday’s game.
Kissel, the late goalscorer, was one of those players. He said last fall’s win for UVM was echoing in his head as the final whistle blew on Saturday night.
“We did it again,” he said, catching his breath before repeating: “We did it again.”
This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project.