While Major League Soccer and Liga MX battle it out in the 2025 Leagues Cup this weekend, two non-professional clubs will be playing what is arguably a far more important match in Burlington, VT. This Saturday, Vermont Green FC will host Ballard FC of Seattle, WA, in the 2025 USL League Two Championship, a game that checks every box for what makes soccer fun and interesting.
As the pre-professional arm of the United Soccer League system, USL 2 can get lost in the shuffle. It’s unofficially in the Fourth Tier of the United States soccer pyramid, below the professional USL Championship (Division II) and USL League One (Division III). But USL League Two has helped shape American soccer since its founding in 1995 as an attractive place for college-aged players to develop. Soon-to-be New England Revolution goalkeeper Matt Turner, all-time Vancouver Whitecaps leading scorer Brian White, and New York City FC 2025 MLS SuperDraft pick Nico Cavallo all passed through League Two.
But in the year of our lord 2025, this Saturday’s final feels different. Yes, both teams are still made up mostly of college kids who will either be back in school or drafted by MLS teams later this year. But for now, both Ballard and Vermont have done more than just cultivate players — they’ve developed unique identities, then weaved them into the fabric of the communities they play in. And now the world is starting to take notice.
What could be the biggest final League Two has seen in its three-decade history will feature teams from opposite sides of the country. The Green represents one of Vermont’s few sports teams, a young club that plays in a small Division I college soccer stadium and that hopes to bring a national title to the country’s 49th-most populous state. As for Ballard, they compete for attention in a metropolis that fields some of the giants of professional sports, and yet they have become a pillar of the community.
This is what a national championship should look like, especially in lower league soccer.
It's also free to stream this Saturday, August 2, at 7:00 pm ET on SportsEngine.
Vermont Green repping the 49th-most populous state
Vermont Green’s website started selling championship game tickets at 10:00 am ET on Wednesday, July 30. By 10:01 am ET, every ticket was gone.
"I was pissed, but I mean, it made sense. It's a championship game," South Burlington fan Quinn Pidgeon told the local Vermont NBC affiliate. "I logged in right at 10 am, and I think I was 1,400th in line.”
You have to wonder if sitting United States Senator Bernie Sanders was one of those in the queue.
Courtesy @sanders.senate.gov
That’s not bad for a team whose stated mission is to save the world.
Ever since its founding in 2021, the Greens have been focused on making statements, with climate justice a driving principle. From merchandise made with sustainable resources to courting sponsors who share the same values as the club, environmentalism is one of the central tenets of the organization. That includes partnerships with the highly political and highly delicious Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, or SunCommon, a Vermont-based residential solar company.
If you go to a Vermont Green game, you’ll get the typical sporting experience you find in the American lower leagues. There will be halftime entertainment for families, maybe even a t-shirt toss. You have the loud and proud Green Mountain Bhoys in their own section leading chants.
But, uniquely, you'll hear the PA announcer mix in tips on how recycling can help fans reduce their carbon footprints, and the benefits of riding a bike to the game alongside goal scorer names. At nearly every match, there will be places wherefans can donate clothing and drop it off to be either donated or recycled into new clothing — some of which is turned into the merchandise that the team sells.
The hippie sports ethos works in Vermont, especially in a college town with a population of 44,000 on the shore of Lake Champlain, one that set a goal to eliminate fossil fuel use in housing and ground transportation by 2030. But it also works on the field.
American soccer first took notice of Vermont Green back during the 2024 US Open Cup, in only its third season of play and just two years after the team joined League Two in 2022. The first-ever tournament match played in the state of Vermont saw a sellout crowd of 4,000-plus witness the home team pull a Cupset by beating professional USL League One (Division III) side Lexington SC, 4-3. That season saw the club reach the League Two playoffs for the second time in three years but ended with a loss in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
This year, Vermont achieved its best-ever regular season. An undefeated record of 11 wins and three draws earned the team a first-ever Northeast Division championship and a near-guaranteed spot in next year’s US Open Cup tournament. In the playoffs, using a system in which the team has hosted three other squads in consecutive weekends, Vermont played in front of packed houses each game. Playoff wins include a 4-1 against Hudson Valley Hammers, a comeback win against FC Motown STA, an extra-time thriller against Lionsbridge FC to win their first-ever Eastern Conference championship, and most recently, a thrilling penalty kick shootout win over Dothan United Dragons.
Vermont has the drama and the spark — not unlike the University of Vermont men’s soccer team, who are the primary tenants at Virtue Field. UVM’s team, featuring New York City FC defender Max Murray, went on a Cinderella run last year in the NCAA Men’s Soccer tournament to win the championship, with a couple of players from Green FC helping to bring the State of Vermont its first-ever team national title.
Michael Battista
Ballard FC back in final
Vermont Green has earned every bit of praise and notoriety they are getting right now. But Ballard has been doing its own thing on the exact opposite side of the country, also to great success. Need proof? Every playoff game held at their home fortress of Interbay Stadium drew sellouts of 1,500 people, or more if standing room space was made available.
The team was also launched in 2022, also made a US Open Cup debut, and also brings thousands of fans out to each home game.
Unlike Vermont, Ballard is situated in the sports metropolis of Seattle, WA, home to seven major professional sports teams. In that respect, Ballard faces many of the same challenges that confront local New York City-area lower division soccer teams, namely being crowded out in a busy landscape.
And yet, like Vermont, becoming a corner of a community has kept fans consistently coming back to Bridges — a nickname taken directly from Ballard Bridge that connects the low-key residential neighborhood of wood-frame houses and water views with Salmon Bay to the south.
It's a team of local talent, pulling from Seattle’s college athletes, ex-professionals, and promising youth players. A team where former Seattle Sounders legend James Riley has served as head coach since 2024. Nearly every sponsor the team has comes from the community. You don’t find hot dogs for sale at games, with fans getting different varieties of food like curry or vegan options.
A supporter once wrote that “Ballard FC has really filled in the sense of authenticity that the Sounders have lost.” In that sense, it feels like a lot of Seattle’s soccer community has grown distant from the organization playing at Lumen Field.Many point to the moment original owner Joe Roth left the organization in 2019, and that the team has since become more focused on building a business than a community.
Does that make Ballard just the hipster alternative? The FC United of Manchester to Manchester United?
No.
Because Ballard’s DNA is still Seattle, and Seattle is still the Sounders. The team is partially owned by former player Lamar Neagle, a Tacoma native who played multiple stints with the Sounders during their early days in MLS. Over its existence, multiple Ballard alumni like Leo Burney, Demian Alvarez, Peter Kingston, Charlie Gaffney, Lars Helleren, and Danny Robles have either gone fully professional with the Sounders or Tacoma Defiance. Ballard isn’t the alternative to the Sounders; it's the culmination of local frustration despite the franchise’s success in MLS. That's what brings fans to the stadium, including the members of The Bridgekeepers, the team’s main supporters’ group.
All of that while being a damn good soccer team on the field. In 2023, just the team’s second season, 3,416 jammed intothe hallowed grounds of Starfire Sports in Tukwila, WA, the facility where the Sounders played many of their US Open Cup games in the past, to see Ballard face Lionsbridge FC in the League Two Championship. With the game tied 1-1 deep into second-half stoppage time, Tukwila’s own Cameron Martin headed in a free kick from fellow local Peter Kingston to win the championship.
Do you want to know how you can tell a crowd is good? If you watch a replay and the reactions drown out whatever the broadcasters are trying to say as they try to comprehend what they just saw.
Ballard FC 2 - 1 Lionsbridge FC | Official Highlights
All in all, Ballard should be here. Not just for a 2025 that featured a near-undefeated regular season that earned them a Northwest Division championship – the world of lower-division soccer is full of good teams that don't get the national attention they deserve. No, Ballard deserves their roses for being a community club just as much as Vermont.
Michael Battista
What is to be done?
So as it stands, we have two League Two teams with deep community roots, and who both had success in short spans. Two things make Saturday’s final even bigger.
First, in a soccer landscape where USL is trying to stand out against MLS, this is a perfect match: A sold-out Virtue Field with celebrities in the crowd and fervent support is exactly the needle-mover a league dreams of. This is the type of game CBS will talk about on Morning Footy, or that fans of other teams will look at and say, “God, I wish that were us.”
Second, it marks a decisive moment for the future direction of soccer in the US.
On August 8, 2015, New York Cosmos B defeated Chattanooga FC in the 2015 National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) National Championship. I bring this up because that game felt like a watershed moment for non-professional soccer in this country. A total of 18,227 fans filled the stands of Finley Stadium in Chattanooga, TN, the largest crowd in the history of US amateur club soccer.
Saturday’s game at Virtue Field feels like it could be an equally monumental moment, despite the venue’s capacity of 2,500 — a number that doesn’t include the fans watching for free just outside the stadium grounds.
The 2015 match showed that soccer in the US could thrive outside MLS. That game was between a full-on grassroots organization in Chattanooga taking on the rebels of the second iteration of the Cosmos. It was a big enough deal that Don Garber himself took a shot at Chattanooga not long after that game in an attempt to downplay the achievement.
Fast forward ten years, and we find ourselves in a similar situation. Soccer in the US, especially outside of MLS, has a chance to boom. USL has a major television deal with CBS, while MLS loses more of the public focus outside of Inter Miami. The upcoming addition of a new USL Division 1 men’s soccer league could mean big things for the sport.
The question for both of these teams now is, “What does the future hold?” There is no promotion and relegation in the United States — yet. And even as the USL is set to begin its own system sometime in the next few years, under the current proposal, it won’t include Green or Ballard since they play in the non-professional League Two, which would not be connected to the Pro/Rel system.
There is a ceiling above Ballard and Green, teams limited by short seasons and modest finances. And yet they connect with their communities, and it’s not unique. Hickory FC from North Carolina saw a crowd of 6,247 come out for their win last weekend to reach this Saturday’s NPSL National Championship, another summer amateur league on the same level as League Two. Annapolis FC in Maryland set a USL League Two record when they drew 12,853 to their home opener earlier this summer at the US Naval Academy.
So, is going professional the only way to grow? The truth is, I don’t know.
I don’t know if Ballard FC could become a lower-division professional soccer team in Seattle. The idea of trying to builda lower-division soccer stadium in a comparable neighborhood in Brooklyn would scare off most backers. The same goes for Vermont Green, who would be required to leave Virtue Field or somehow expand it in order to comply with theprofessional league standards.
And that’s just the start. You’d have to find an investor (which probably wouldn’t be hard for Vermont), pay the players, and account for more expensive travel — while Vermont’s League Two season can be based in New England, a USL League One season will have them going to Eugene, OR.
The costs of running a professional team are higher than the average fan might realize. Fulfilling every one of the professional league standards is a tall task for any team. For Vermont, they could probably do it. But right now, why would they?
It's risky, but in recent years, some have cracked the code on how to make sustainable amateur soccer teams in the US. Former FC Dallas General Manager Michael Hitchcock, for example, now owns ten teams in multiple amateur leagues. All of them follow similar patterns, and the multi-club model seems to work: The teams make money, or at the very least are sustainable.
Remember what I said about Ballard before? That the team has worked because it, in essence, helped capture that community feeling that the Sounders had lost? Going professional risks cutting out that same feeling once again.
Teams like Annapolis Blues, which are owned by Hitchcock, could easily go professional in USL League One. The same is true for Vermont. But I don't think they need to, at least right now.
Teams like this have figured it out snd done well for themselves in the environment they have. In essence, they've made lemonade out of US Soccer's countless lemons. That does not mean it's perfect. But even to attempt to go professional would potentially risk hiring what these teams have built through the summer community and the local games families come out to see.
To put it more bluntly, if you can make amateur soccer work and stick your name on a local beer – which is what most of Hitchcock’s teams do – you are set. Maybe, as time marches on, there will be a pathway for the teams to go pro.
This Saturday’s match for the League Two Championship is between teams who have done more than enough to earn the chance to win a national title. Is a move to a professional league in their future? For now, it doesn’t matter. This is a game to be watched and enjoyed by all soccer lovers in this country.
