Following his departure from the United States men’s national team, Gregg Berhalter will return to Major League Soccer to become the head coach and sporting director of the Chicago Fire. It’s Berhalter’s first time back in the league since leaving the Columbus Crew in 2018 to become the head coach of the USMNT. He’ll be in for quite a task in turning around the Fire, who have missed out on the MLS postseason for seven consecutive seasons. In fact, they’ve only made the playoffs once in the last 12 seasons overall.
“After a thorough and detailed search that included a number of exceptional candidates, it became clear that Gregg Berhalter was the right choice to lead our sporting operations,” said Chicago Fire FC Owner and Chairman Joe Mansueto. “His previous success in MLS, where he thrived in a dual role, and his experience leading the U.S. Men’s National Team over the last six years make him an ideal fit for our vision for the Club moving forward.”
Despite record sales like Jhon Duran to Aston Villa and Gaga Slonina to Chelsea, the investment of the Fire in big name signings hasn’t had the expected impact to push the team forward with big name additions like Xherdan Shaqiri failing to make their mark on MLS. While they boast a strong academy and are able to identify up and coming youth prospects, the Fire need to hit on top level signings to keep up.
The bar has been raised by Inter Miami, the Los Angeles teams and others around the league on what it takes to compete, but the Fire haven’t been afraid to invest, it’s just that that investment hasn’t paid dividends. They broke their transfer record to bring in Hugo Cuypers from Genk but he responded by only scoring 10 goals in 30 appearances so far this season. That’s not enough to pull the Fire to competing on his own, which is why he’ll need more help in the coming campaign.
This is where Berhalter comes in, having the ability to build out the sporting side of the club how he sees fit. He’s done it before with the Crew, leading them to playoff appearances and an exciting brand of soccer, but this task will be much harder with how deep the Fire’s holes are along with how inflexible their roster is on paper heading into the 2025-26 season. There will be plenty of change coming and if Berhalter does well, it’s a way to quickly put the bad taste of getting knocked out of the Copa America during the group stage behind him, but it’s also the toughest job that he’s taken to date. Berhalter has plenty of connections in American soccer that could help make this work, but it’s about hitting the ground running from the start to begin putting losing seasons firmly in the past.
