CLIFFWOOD, N.J. — On a stormy Saturday, a group of young boys wearing red soccer uniforms and cleats in a dizzying array of colors clip-clopped out of the rain and into an old warehouse, where wealthy residents of this historic community along Raritan Bay once stored their antique cars.

That space is now occupied by an unlikely tenant, and serving a very different clientele. Xolos Academy F.C. New Jersey, a soccer academy affiliated with the Mexican first-division team Club Tijuana, has transformed the warehouse into a synthetic-turf field of dreams, its walls covered with logos and action photos of a favorite son.

They coach soccer here now, but what the academy really offers is opportunity for the sons and daughters of Hispanic immigrants from the area. These are the kind of players who routinely fall through the cracks of American soccer, victims of financial hardships that sometimes prevent their talents from being properly nurtured, and exposed, in the pay-to-play culture that dominates youth soccer in the United States.

“Some of these players have been kept in the shadows simply because they could not afford to play the game they love,” said Joe DiMauro, a longtime coach and trainer who runs the warehouse academy. It is the fifth American affiliate of Club Tijuana, and the first in the Northeastern United States.