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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. Icon Sportswire via Getty Images 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…

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Filed under: News - @ October 1, 2025 4:23 am