Ex-Levante Goalkeeper at World’s First Vegan Football Club

Although born in Cartagena, goalkeeper Robert Lynch Sánchez began his career with Valencia’s Levante Football Club before moving to Britain to play for Brighton & Hove Albion at the age of 15, turning professional with them in June 2015.

In June 2018 he moved on loan to Forest Green Rovers for the 2018–19 season.

Forest Green plays in the Second Division, although it is the 4^th in real terms.

The club, based in Gloucestershire, is quite unique in the world of football, largely due to its owner, Dale Vince.

Dale Vince, OBE, is an example of a 21^st century businessman, in that sustainability is core to his business. Although he used to be a New Age traveller, he is today the owner of the electricity company Ecotricity.

In 1991, he saw his first windfarm, and in 1995 he founded a Renewable Energy Company, and the following year launched his first wind turbine supplying green electricity.

In 2010 he became a major shareholder of Forest Green Rovers FC, and three months later became club chairman.

From 2011, players were banned from eating red meat and later the sale of all red meat products was banned at the club, which instead offered vegetarian options and free-range poultry and fish from sustainable sources. By October 2015, Forest Green had officially become the world’s first vegan football club, receiving the Vegan Trademark from the Vegan Society, and was described by FIFA as the world’s greenest club, the first to be certified carbon neutral by the United Nations.

They save on water too, collecting rainwater under the pitch for irrigation at their New Lawn stadium, where you can also charge your electric car and follow the Eco Trail.

A new stadium is in the pipeline, called Eco Park, made almost entirely out of wood, and sited in parkland where five hundred trees and 1.8km of new hedgerows will be planted.

Forest Green’s business partners are also interested in the environment; Quorn has collaborated since 2015, and the club’s Q Pie was commended at the British Pie Awards. They have also won the Menu of the Year award from the Sport and Leisure Catering Magazine.

Sea Shepherd was founded in 1977 by Paul Watson, and is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization whose mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.