A Q&A with Triple-G
"The torch has been passed, and I’m really at peace with everything." --Gregg Berhalter, on his tenure as coach of the USMNT
The Crew have won one game since they were bounced from Leagues Cup in early August. The lone victory in 50 days was a trampolining, 5-4 decision over the Atlanta FCs in the Hollywood of the South, where soccer was invented. The Crew led 5-0, Diego Rossi pulled his hamstring, the Atlantas scored on a PK in first-half stoppage time and proceeded to run down the Crew on Route One in the second half.
The Crew couldn’t even beat the New England Revolution at home on Aug. 23. Caleb Porter’s team emerged from Columbus with a 2-1 victory. Porter was fired three weeks later, on Sept. 15. Until someone else hires him — and there’s an owner out there, somewhere, who will hire him — the victory in Columbus, over the team he once coached, will be the last win of his MLS career.
Enter Gregg Berhalter. He coached the Crew from 2013-2018, made it to the 2015 MLS Cup final (won by Porter’s Portland Timbers team, with Darlington Nagbe) and nursed the organization through #SaveTheCrew. He left Columbus for the national team job in December, 2017.
Berhalter’s tenure with the USMNT was cleaved by the Reyna affair in 2023, when Gio Reyna’s parents, rankled by their son’s lack of playing time at the World Cup, dug up some mud and started slinging it Berhalter’s way. Google it if you wish. It was well-chronicled, and I was among the hordes who wrote about it. Note: I am a staunch Berhalter defender. This is a fine human being, a stalwart family man and an excellent coach.
Anyway, by the time Berhalter was relieved after his duties following a premature exit from the 2024 Copa America, his USMNT CV included a 44-17-13 record with two continental championship and an appearance in the Round of 16 of the World Cup.
Berhalter, whose home base was Chicago during his time with the USMNT, was hired by the Chicago Fire to be head coach and director of football 351 days ago, on Oct. 8, 2024. The Fire haven’t made the playoffs since 2017. Last year they won seven games and the mythical Wooden Spoon, which goes to the last-place team in the league.
This season, the Fire (13-11-6, 57 goals for/53 against) are sitting in ninth place. If the season ended today, they’d be matched against the eighth-place Crew (13-7-11, 51/47) in the Eastern Conference wild-card game.
Saturday night, the Fire will host the Crew at Soldier Field. It’s a big game for two teams clinging to playoff spots, two teams going in different directions — the Fire are 5-2-2 in league play since July 16.
Earlier this week, Berhalter ceded a half hour of his time to speak on the phone with The Disrespected. What follows is the transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: You had the highest-profile job in American soccer. Some will remember it for the angry soccer parents. Others will conjure you’re re-hiring, for good or ill. Are the any feelings you want to express about your time with the USMNT?
A: It’s a great experience. I think more than anything, now that the dust has settled, I’m proud of the job that was done with this young group of players. We took a really young group of kids and turned them into men, and we had to perform while we were doing it. We won multiple titles — Nations League, Gold Cup, went to the second round of the World Cup, most shutouts in World Cup history. So, we did a good job. And it was a great experience, I enjoyed it and, you know, things happen for a reason: I got fired and Sebastian (one of the Berhalters’ four children, a midfielder with the Vancouver Whitecaps) gets an opportunity (with the national team). The torch has been passed, and I’m really at peace with everything.
Q: How’s Sebastian? Do you communicate with him often?
A: He’s been doing great. It’s so fun watching him play, mature and just progress. We talk every day, almost.
Q: What was it like coaching against him? (The Fire beat the Whitecaps 3-1 in Vancouver in March.)
A: It was a surreal experience. We won the game, which was great. But it was just really weird, to be given a scouting report and talking about your son. And on the field, you’re rooting-not-rooting for him. It’s really, really odd — but it was a great moment. The whole family was out there. It was more of a celebration of family that has …. progressed.
Q: You spent three months between jobs last year. What did you do during your time in the wilderness?
A: The first part is with your family. You’re kind of processing. I don’t know if you’ve hard me say this before, but getting fired is like a death in your family. Like a funeral. You have to really take time to process that. It took a couple of weeks, a lone, isolation thing. I was out on Long Island with my parents. Really good time. Then, from there, I think the disappointment turns to reflection and you really want to figure out, ‘OK, where did it go wrong?’ There were a lot of conversations with players in trying to understand where we could’ve been better. I got a lot of feedback, and all of that feedback starts to motivate you again. And then that’s when you get excited, that’s when you hit the road, visiting clubs again, visiting people and just get out there, absorbing new ideas.
Q: You said you had four or five offers. Why Chicago? Did the fact that you’d put down roots there make it a perfect job?
A: I never want to make the job a convenience thing. Something really had to speak to me. I sat down with the owner (Joe Mansueto). When he really got excited was when he talked about what he wanted to build for the city of Chicago. Having spent the previous five years there, that got me really excited as well. I started thinking, ‘There’s a lot of synergy here.’ The owner wants to build a strong club that the city could be proud of. There was a really strong vision that attracted me.
Q: Forgive me, but I’m not up on the stadium situation there. It seems to change ever 20 minutes. It’s confusing. Help me.
A: It is confusing. The Bears have priority at Soldier Field so, during the fall, if they play a game on Sunday and we play on Saturday, we have to move our game. So we have two or threee games this year moved out to SeatGeek, our stadium out in Bridgeview. It’s a soccer-specific stadium. Not on the scale of Soldier, but it’s a decent stadium. They’re in the final stages of approval to build a stadium in downtown Chicago. Right on the river. It’s going to be fantastic.
Q: The car directly in front of you in the playoff race is Black & Gold. Any thoughts?
A: I'll always have feelings for Columbus. It was ground zero, basically, in my coaching career. Met a lot of amazing people. It’s an incredible club and I was really lucky to be a part of it. Always fond memories.
Q: You had a 17-year career as a professional player. You’ve coached for nearly 15 years. You woke up on August 1st, and you were 52 years old. That’s still young, but it won’t be long before your coaching career comprises more than half of your adult life. What have you learned?
A: I’ve learned a lot. I see the league differently. Everything has evolved. I’ve evolved as a person and a coach. So when I think back to when I got to Columbus (in 2013, after being fired by the Swedish side Hammarby) it was almost like unknown, like, ‘OK, can I do it?’ You have to prove it to yourself, also. And now is an opportunity where I’m sure I can do it, but now it’s a matter of getting it done. It all comes down to the same thing — your values, your work ethic.
Q: You’ve turned around a moribund franchise in your first season in Chicago …
A: We still want more. We want to achieve things. That’s the part where we’re extremely competitive. For me, it’s about how do you build a structure, how do you build processes. How do you build a club for long-term success? That’s the challenge. And that’s not easy. We had to change expectations, we had to change work ethic in a lot of players and staff members, and there was a lot of change in personnel. And you only have one transfer window to do it. There was a lot to do. I feel like there have been some good steps that have been made, and now it’s just about continuing.
Q: What’s the atmosphere in Chicago?
A: When I talk to fans, what I sense most is hope. And that’s great. The fans always want to have hope. The Cubs are in the playoffs and we’re pushing for the playoffs. It’s a good time for Chicago sports.
Q: I hate the Cubs, but never mind. Tactically, are you there yet?
A: Good question. Our identity is not fully where I want it to be . I think we’re a very good, dangerous attacking team. We haven’t been as good defensively and a lot of that has to do with personnel, having some injuries and things like that. For me it’s about creating a team that’s entertaining to watch but is also very well-rounded, and can compete in every phase of the game, and knows how to manage through games. We have made progress. The team has set a number of records so for in the history of the club, so we’re doing a decent job.
Q: Your team is 5-5-5 at home and 8-6-1 on the road. Only Cincinnati and San Diego have won more road games (10 apiece) than your Fire. Why so good on the road?
A: I would also ask why we are so bad at home. We’re still getting to the bottom of that. I expect it has something to do with: our home losses have all come to good teams, so that’s the starting point. All the top five teams in the Supporters’ Shield rankings are basically our losses. (Editor’s note: Fire home losses were at the hands of Philadelphia, Cincinnati and San Diego, who are 1-2-3 in the SS standings heading into the weekend, and NYCFC and Nashville, who are eighth and 10th in the current SS Standings).
We lost to top teams, so maybe weren’t not a top team yet. That’s the first thing. And the second thing is, for us it’s not about making excuses. So, we can talk about sometimes the atmosphere, or sometimes the field, but all that doesn’t really matter because it’s about getting over that. For us, we’re playing at home, teams are coming in, they’ve travelled … we need to take advantage of that, and haven’t done so.
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Michael Arace
