The Vermont Lottery offers several draw games for those willing to make a bet to win big.

WINOOSKI — Muyisa Mutume’s neighborhood grocery store here is always stocked with food and drinks popular in his native Congo. But in recent months, he’s also been selling something else: soccer jerseys.

That’s because, for the first time in more than half a century, Congo’s national men’s soccer team is playing in the FIFA World Cup. The global tournament, hosted this year across 16 cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, kicks off Thursday and runs through mid-July.

Standing at the counter of M. Square Market, with a stack of red, yellow and blue jerseys in the cabinet in front of him, Mutume said excitement for the tournament has been approaching “crazy” levels throughout Vermont’s Congolese community. 

Congo qualified for this year’s World Cup, which has 48 total teams, with a thrilling overtime win against Jamaica in April. The last time the country made the cut for the competition was 1974, when it would have been labeled on a globe as Zaire.

“Soccer is the main sport in the Congo. Like, in every corner — even small villages — it’s something that brings a lot of folks together,” Mutume said. “So, when there’s a soccer game, people take it to the extreme.”

Vermont is home to some 500 to 700 Congolese families, the majority living in Winooski and other cities and towns in Chittenden County, according to Emmanuel Zia, a coordinator for the mutual aid organization Congolese Community of Vermont. 

Seeing Congo’s team on soccer’s biggest stage is “like Christmas for us,” Mutume said.

‘Very much on the soccer map’

This year’s tournament also comes, in Vermont, at a time when soccer has perhaps never had a bigger fan base. 

That’s in large part due to the success of Vermont Green FC, a semiprofessional club that has been playing in Burlington since 2022. The club, which mostly fields college players on break from the school year, routinely sells out its 2,500-capacity home games at the University of Vermont. Some matches have drawn thousands more fans.

Vermont Green has made global headlines from the start for its explicit support of progressive social causes, including environmental justice and immigrants’ rights. Then, last year, the club’s men’s team had an undefeated season that culminated in winning the national championship of its summertime league, called USL League 2.

The August 2025 win was all the more significant because it came less than a year after the UVM men’s soccer team won its own national championship, in the NCAA’s Division I — the school’s first-ever title in a major team sport. 

“(This) pocket of land in New England is now very much on the soccer map,” declared the global soccer news website Goal.com, writing about Burlington after Vermont Green and UVM’s back-to-back championships.

Vermont Green Football Club fans cheer their team during introductions before the USL League Two national championship against Ballard FC in Burlington, August 2025. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

For Dan Versace, a former collegiate soccer player who lives in South Burlington, “it’s amazing” how Vermont Green has brought soccer fans in the area like himself together in recent years, he said. Versace is a founding member of the Green Mountain Bhoys, the team’s official supporters’ group that he said started as just a casual meetup at a Burlington brewery.

Versace coaches youth soccer and said he’s also noticed, since 2022, how attending Vermont Green games has boosted kids’ knowledge of the sport. Many of his young players now point to Vermont Green players — along with global superstars like Erling Haaland of Norway and France’s Kylian Mbappé — as their favorites, he said. 

At the same time, he’s noticed more youth players schooling their parents on soccer’s sometimes complex rules, rather than the other way around.

“This general awareness of the sport and passion for the sport is huge,” Versace said. “And I think one of the big reasons that’s happening is just how accessible it is in Burlington right now.” 

‘How the sausage is made’

Versace is “obviously” excited for the World Cup to start this week, he said, and plans to watch as many of the games as he can. But he said that he and many other fans he knows see this year’s tournament as “sort of divisive” for reasons that have little to do with the game itself.

FIFA, the global governing body for soccer, has faced widespread criticism for employing what’s known as dynamic pricing to adjust the cost of World Cup tickets for real or perceived demand. The result has been eye-wateringly high ticket prices that have put the tournament out of reach for many fans, and are by far the most expensive in the competition’s history.

Four U.S. state attorneys general have opened legal probes into FIFA’s ticket practices in recent weeks. FIFA has faced several law enforcement investigations before, including over a massive bribery and corruption scheme tied to its decisions to host previous World Cups in Russia and Qatar.

The leadup to this year’s tournament has also been colored by some of the most controversial policies of President Donald Trump’s administration. This World Cup will be the first during which a host country, the U.S., is at war with one of the tournament’s contenders, Iran. 

Trump’s restrictive immigration policies have had an impact, too. At least one referee from Somalia and one member of the Iraqi team’s staff were denied entry at U.S. airports, according to NPR. Meanwhile, dozens of fans, including a group from Morocco, have been denied travel visas despite having tickets for games, NPR reported.

“It’s one of those, you know, ‘Don’t ask how the sausage is made’ questions, right? But you can’t do that anymore,” Versace said. “It’s impossible to be ignorant to a lot of these topics.”

‘It’s already a win’

The high cost of tickets put attending a World Cup match this year out of reach for Mutume, the Winooski grocer. He was aware of at least a small group of Congolese Vermonters planning to travel to watch the country play in the coming weeks.

Congo’s first match of the tournament is June 17, against global powerhouse Portugal. Each country is guaranteed at least three games in the tournament, after which the top finishers from 12 groups of four teams each will advance to a knockout-style bracket.

Mutume said he’s under no illusions that his country will win this year’s World Cup. But lifting the trophy really isn’t the point, he said.

“We’re just happy that they’re there,” Mutume said, smiling. “I mean, it’s already a win for us.”

Vermont Green FC, a semi-professional soccer club based in Burlington, played the Canadian men’s national team in a pre-FIFA World Cup scrimmage Saturday. 

The game, held in Montreal, served as one of Canada’s final training sessions before competing in this year’s World Cup, which starts Thursday. Canada’s first game of the tournament is set for Friday against Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The tournament, which takes place every four years, is being played this year across 16 cities in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. The final is scheduled for July 19.

It’s not uncommon ahead of the World Cup for national soccer teams to play local clubs as warm-ups for the big stage. These matches, known as “friendlies,” give teams a chance to practice key plays and finalize their tactics in a low-stakes setting.

But for Vermont Green, which is made up largely of college-level players and was founded just five years ago, the match was “an enormous opportunity,” said Adam Pfeifer, the team’s sporting director, in a press release announcing the game.

The match was closed to the public and the team declined to share the result. 

“It was surreal,” said David Ajagbe, a forward for Vermont Green who plays for the University of Portland during the school year. Ajagbe, a junior, is from Vancouver — a fact he said made the weekend’s game take on another level of significance.  

“I want to do whatever I can to help my country be ready for the World Cup,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “It’s like a once in a lifetime opportunity — and it was just a great, great experience.”

Ajagbe said he knew some of the Canadian team’s players personally, including one of its stars: Alphonso Davies, who plays for perennial German league champions FC Bayern Munich. Ajagbe trains with Davies in the winter, he said.

Vermont Green, meanwhile, has a host of other connections to Canada. For the past two seasons, the team has fielded six Canadian players. Several of them, including Ajagbe, played in the national championship game the team won in 2025. 

That league, USL League 2, takes place over the summer and is one of the main competitions for collegiate players to showcase their skills for professional scouts. 

Vermont also plays an annual match, outside the confines of its league, against semi-professional teams from Quebec that it calls the “Maple Cup.” In the cup’s three iterations so far — two featuring its men’s team, and one with its women’s squad — the Green have won every time. 

“What’s sweeter than Vermont maple syrup? Drinking Vermont maple syrup out of the Maple Cup trophy,” the club wrote in a press release about the women’s win last month.