Chicago Fire head coach Gregg Berhalter waves at fans after the MLS match between Atlanta United and Chicago Fire FC at Soldier Field on May 10.
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For most of Gregg Berhalter’s six-ish-year tenure as the manager of the U.S. men’s national team, one of the most maddening things about the discourse he inspired was that neither his supporters nor detractors sounded reasonable.
Those who never wanted him in the job depicted him as clueless and, even worse, in cahoots with Major League Soccer to give MLS players advantages over their Europea-based competitors for USMNT minutes. Those who ardently supported him suggested no one else who could possibly understand the unique challenges or pressures of managing what is globally a relatively ordinary and low-pressure national team.
Based on the results he earned, Berhalter did a perfectly satisfactory – but not exceptional – job in his first World Cup cycle. And as so often happens with satisfactory but unexceptional national team coaches, things went sour when the USSF tried to run it back for a second cycle.
Further, Berhalter’s thoughtful nature and insistence on a sophisticated tactical model always suggested he was far better suited for the daily grind of the club game.
So when the Chicago Fire hired him to be their new manager and sporting director, it was odd how little fanfare it received relative to the similar appointment of another former USMNT boss, Bruce Arena, to lead a similar rebuild at the San Jose Earthquakes. Yet over the course of the season, it’s become increasingly clear that, whatever you made of his national team exploits, Berhalter remains an elite MLS managerial mind, and one of maybe only a handful of people on earth capable of simultaneously doing both the MLS manager and sporting director jobs well.
The Drought Is Over
That sentiment was crystalized on Tuesday night, when the Berhalter’s Chicago side brought a wild end to the league’s longest active playoff drought via a shocking 5-3 victory over Inter Miami.
After giving back a two goal lead, Justin Reynolds and Brian Gutierrez scored late to seal the win and guarantee Chicago its first playoff appearance since 2017. That win followed another impressive 2-0 victory on Saturday over the Columbus Crew, Berhalter’s club before he took the USMNT job.
While Arena’s San Jose can also still book a postseason return, Berhalter’s project is more impressive for a couple reasons.
For starters, there’s the obvious disparity in quality between the Eastern in Western Conferences. In the former, Philadelphia, Miami, Cincinnati, Nashville, Orlando and maybe Columbus feel like genuine MLS Cup contenders. In the latter, it’s beginning to look like it’s only between Vancouver, Seattle and LAFC.
To think of it another way, Chicago needed 51 points simply to clinch one of the nine East places. In the West, that haul would be good enough for fifth in the table.
Not Just Retreads
Then there’s the manner in which Berhalter’s fire have rebuilt. While owner Joe Mansueto has put up plenty of money, Berhalter has not leaned heavily on players he knew previously from the USMNT or Columbus, in the way Arena has targeted MLS vets and some of his former players from New England.
Instead, the player acquisition feels far more sustainable and multi-pronged, with acquisitions from Spain, Portugal and Belgium blended with a couple intraleague signings and a couple blossoming homegrown talents. And this is despite some rumored bigger plans having to be adjusted when Kevin De Bruyne rebuffed what were apparently serious efforts to bring the Belgian to Chicago this summer.
Maybe most impressive of all is that Berhalter has done this without the help of many of his familiar assistants from his USMNT days, because several are enjoying current MLS managerial success of their own. Two of those, B.J. Callaghan and Nico Estevez, will coach against each other in Wednesday’s U.S. Open Cup final. A third, Mikey Varas, is has guided expansion side San Diego FC to the most surprising season in MLS.
There’s still a long way to go to build the Fire into a regular trophy contender. But at age 52, still in his coaching prime, and with far more financial backing than he ever had in Columbus, there’s every reason to think Berhalter could do it. And for all the controversy his USMNT tenure created, it also seems to have sharpened his squad building skills.
Berhalter’s Crew sides made four playoffs in five seasons. His U.S. team enjoyed a solid 2022 World Cup showing. His eventual national team demise was little different from that of Bob Bradley, Jurgen Klinsman or even the more-recent tenure of Bruce Arena.
Berhalter was never the disaster some people decreed, just a coach whose strengths were best suited to the club game.