Kearny Scots are based in a New Jersey town that has bred some of the finest players in US history. Now they’re looking to the future
Immigrants from Scotland poured into northern New Jersey in the late 19th century to find work in the giant textile mills and, in their free time, play fitba – or soccer as the locals more commonly call it these days. A club known as the Kearny Scots joined the new National Association Football League in 1895 and finished second to a club from nearby Bayonne.
The NAFBL did not last long, but the Kearny Scots are still here. The Scots-American Athletic Club was formed in 1931 in the working-class town 14 miles west of Manhattan, and the Kearny Scots won five straight American Soccer League championships from 1937 to 1941. The Kearny Scots have played in regional amateur leagues for the last 70 years.
But now the Kearny Scots have raised the stakes. With backing from the town and the Scots-American Club, the club has joined the Eastern Premier Soccer League, an elite amateur league affiliated with the US Adult Soccer Association. The league, part of a system that includes promotion and relegation, had 25 clubs in three conferences in the 2020-21 season.
The Kearny Scots are already training for a 2021-22 season that is likely to open in September, with some home matches to be played at the legendary Harvey Field Complex in Kearny. The club has landed corporate sponsors, with the potential to add a few more. The club’s long history has been a major selling point, even to its new manager.
“It’s a story that no one else can really tell,” Marin Frasheri-Gjoca, a 34-year-old who arrived in the US from Albania in 2002, tells the Guardian.
As it turns out, the Kearny Scots will be composed of elite area players, mostly in their 20s, who are, like the original Scots, immigrants or first-generation Americans.
“You’re just seeing them coming from a different part of the world – all over the world,” Frasheri-Gjoca says.
Unlike the old days, the newest version of the Kearny Scots won’t be playing against the very best teams in the nation; they are a few levels from the top and have no immediate or even long-term aspirations to, say, climb the ladder up to Major League Soccer and become archrivals with the New York Red Bulls, who play in Harrison, two miles away.
That would take millions of dollars, which the Kearny Scots don’t have (a berth in MLS will cost you just north of $300m these days). But the Scots add tradition and history to US soccer’s grass roots. According to the club website, the Scotland-based Clark Thread Co formed teams in 1883 after opening two mills in town, and ONT FC (“our new thread”) won American Football Association cups in 1885, 1886 and 1887.
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