NJ Footy Neighborhoods: Thistle FC Field (Kearny)

Thistle FC field is now home to an NJ Footy league, the latest add to a great legacy.

NJ Footy kicked off its first-ever spring league at the Thistle FC Field earlier this year, and the pristine outdoor turf makes it one of the best soccer destinations in the tri-state area.

A hidden gem in its own right, the field is also steeped in history - and comes with one of the most extraordinary backstories in American soccer.

An unassuming industrial town of around 40,000 people, Kearny (pronounced CAR-nee) is tucked just west of Manhattan in the shadow of the New York skyline. But its soccer roots run deeper than almost anywhere else in the United States.

Historians have called it the cradle of American soccer - and that's not hyperbole when you see the players Kearny has produced and the influence it has had on a sport which, even today, plays in the shadow of more traditional US pastimes.

One club - three incredible World Cup caliber talents. Photo: Getty Images Mike Stobe

Harkes, Meola and Ramos

Kearny's passion for the beautiful game traces back to the Scottish immigrants who worked in the mills on the banks of the Passaic River in the late nineteenth century. By the 1880s, a Kearny club had won the country's first three national championships - and that culture has never left the town.

But let's cut to the chase: the extraordinary emergence of three Kearny kids in the 1980s who went on to become senior internationals for their country.

That trio featured Tab Ramos, John Harkes and Tony Meola - three kids from the same small town, the same club, the same streets. Think about that for a second. One World Cup player emerging from a town of 40,000 is fortunate. Two is remarkable. Three, from the same club, at the same time, is the kind of thing that doesn't happen in real life.

Except it did. Right here.

"It's not like this everywhere?"

What makes it even more extraordinary is the backdrop. This was 1980s America - a country that barely knew soccer existed. No MLS, no national footprint, no culture of the game beyond tight-knit immigrant communities.

But Harkes, for one, had no idea. "On the street, on the corners, we did it all the time," he later recalled. "We didn't realise that it wasn't like that everywhere else. We thought Kearny wasn't any different than anywhere else." They were kids with a passion for the game in a country that didn't share it - they just didn't know it yet.

The passion came from Kearny itself - and specifically from the Scottish immigrant coaches who shaped them. Harkes was the son of Jimmy Harkes, a Dundee-born footballer who'd grown up in the shadow of Tannadice. The coaches who drilled Ramos and Meola were cut from the same cloth - Scottish fathers who'd arrived in Kearny and carried the game with them.

Never mind that Ramos was of Uruguayan heritage and Meola Italian-American. In Kearny, they were football players, and that meant being schooled the Scottish way. Ramos became "wee man." Meola was "big man." The nicknames said everything.

The careers of midfielders Ramos and Harkes took them in different directions - the former never leaving the US, while Harkes made a name for himself in the English Premier League, primarily with Sheffield Wednesday.

Meola, meanwhile, had a brief spell in English football early in his career before returning home, where he starred for Sporting Kansas City and the New York Red Bulls.

All-Stars

Remarkably, Ramos (82), Harkes (91) and Meola (100) went on to make a combined 273 appearances for the US - the goalkeeper captaining his country at the 1994 World Cup and one of only 17 players to hit a century of games for the Stars and Stripes.

At World Cups, the three Kearny-ites played six times together across the 1990 and 1994 tournaments, Ramos notably with an assist in the US' sole victory during that timeframe (a 2-1 win over Colombia).

Their remarkable journey from Kearny's streets to two World Cups became the subject of the documentary Soccertown, USA - a portrait of three childhood friends who helped inspire future generations across the nation.

Thirty-plus years on, NJ Footy is keeping that spirit alive at Thistle FC Field - where Ramos, Harkes and Meola's stellar footballing journeys began.

With the 2026 World Cup back on US soil this summer, there's never been a better time to play in 'Soccertown'.

Want in? Take the first step and register for our summer league at Thistle Field here.