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Much has been made about the Chicago Fire’s move to hire former USMNT boss Gregg Berhalter as their new head coach and director of football. The maligned manager departed his role as the top-man on the United States coaching staff with a deteriorating reputation — but was that really warranted?
In short, yes. The end of his tenure as USA manager was nothing short of a disaster, crashing out of the Copa América on home soil in the group stage in humiliating fashion being the peak of the disaster. But everything leading up to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was a different story, and that part of his tenure shows just why the Chicago Fire were shrewd in their decision to bring him on board.
The Fire will head into the 2025 season having failed to qualify for the MLS Cup Playoffs for a seventh straight campaign — does that ring a bell? When hired by U.S. Soccer to take over the national team, Berhalter came in off the back of the great disaster in Trinidad and Tobago in 2017, where the United States had failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1986.
U.S. Soccer tasked Berhalter with picking up the pieces of a burned down house, rebuilding from the ground up, and boy did he ever. While his tenure may be tainted by the final 18 months of mediocrity, and even failure at times, 2018-2022 was a period in which the United States took a stranglehold on CONCACAF, securing a Gold Cup and a Nations League before heading to Qatar and swinging the rivalry with Mexico drastically in their favor. Now how does that period of success translate to MLS?
With his new role as director of football, Berhalter can use the recruitment skills he showed as United States boss, where he played a role in convincing a slew of dual-nationals to join his project. Most notably, Yunus Musah, Jesús Ferreira, Sergiño Dest, Folarin Balogun, and Ricardo Pepi were all convinced to forsake other options at the international level and pledge their futures to the United States men’s national team.
After failing to make the postseason for nearly a decade, the new Fire boss will be tasked with convincing new recruits that the club is on the up and ultimately his project is worth joining, a role that seems to have been no trouble to him in the past.
On the pitch in MLS however, if his years as Columbus Crew boss are anything to go by, Berhalter has proven that at this level he can not only build a successful, entertaining team, but sustain one. His Crew side made the playoffs in four of his five seasons playing slick, attacking football, and finished runners up in the MLS Cup final in 2015.
In Chicago, Berhalter will have young talent at his disposal like Brian Gutiérrez and Chris Brady, but he will have plenty of work to do to rebuild the club in his image.
While a few clubs in MLS have ownership groups with little to no ambition, Chicago’s owners have shown that they are willing to splash the cash in order to patch up the holes, but without guidance and MLS experience to point that money in the right direction they will continue to wallow in the lower reaches of the standings. In steps Berhalter.
Being a successful MLS coach may just be his level, and if it is, that’s perfectly fine. But with pieces to be picked up for a club and fanbase crying out for any sort of positivity, the Fire decision-makers have proven that they can go out and make the right moves from time to time.
United States fans may think that everything he touches disintegrates, but upon closer inspection, Chicago have hired the man with the CV needed.