In most ways this was just another forgettable season in a 15-year string of mostly forgettable seasons in Chicago: They spent some money, they lost some games, they shuttled in between a couple of stadia, a few young players showed flashes, and they lost some more games.
In the end, it added up to the usual spot outside of the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs looking in. It’s now seven years in a row, and 13 of the past 15. In a league of parity it should be impossible to be so consistently bad, but the Fire have managed it.
In another way, though, this year was most unusual. Because in mid-season, sporting director Georg Heitz – the architect of the past half-decade of Fire futility – announced he was stepping down. And Xherdan Shaqiri, one of the all-time Designated Player busts, preceded him out the door.
And here’s the shocking thing: They didn’t then squander this moment by signing more players to bad, long-term contracts that would doom the Fire for the next half-decade. Instead, they had a plan to keep the front-office job open, keep that DP slot open, and set their sights on a new day.
Today, that day has arrived. And that’s where we’ll start:
For the past two months I reported, and Tom Bogert reported, and local media like the guys at MenInRed97.com all reported the same thing: former US men’s national team head coach Gregg Berhalter was likely to be both the new director of football and head coach next year, with current head coach Frank Klopas moving to another role in the org.
On Tuesday morning it became official. Gregg doesn’t even have to buy a new house!
My take is that this is an unambiguously good thing. Berhalter had a consistent track record of success both with the Crew – on a much smaller budget than he’s likely to get in Chicago – and then with the USMNT. He is a good coach whose teams play cohesive, if sometimes boring, defensively stout soccer (though with Hansi Flick’s Barca running wild and Berhalter with a notable penchant for copying the hot new thing in Europe, “exciting, defensively suspect soccer” might now be on the menu).
Should there be concern about Berhalter in the dual role of director of football and head coach? Maybe a little, but to borrow a line from a buddy, “I think the job titles matter a lot less than the processes and I would trust Gregg to make good choices there.”
In other words, I think he’d create an organization that works.
It’s funny that Heitz is finally on his way out after a winter window that was almost certainly his best as sporting director. They overspent on DP No. 9 Hugo Cuypers, who has been pretty good (and I think would be very good in Berhalter’s system), but “pretty good” is so much better than most of the DPs brought in during the Heitz era. And they nabbed Kellyn Acosta as a free agent. He’s been OK, if not exactly franchise-changing.
They didn’t sign any disastrous new contracts or hand out any inexplicable extensions. There’s not a ton of money coming off the books, but there’s some, and potentially a good bit more if owner Joe Mansueto OKs a buy-out (I’d be utterly shocked if he didn’t).
So between those two guys, as well as homegrowns Brian Gutiérrez and Chris Brady, along with useful players in or entering their prime like Andrew Gutman, Allan Arigoni, Carlos Terán, Mauricio Pineda and Maren Haile-Selassie, this isn’t a complete teardown job.
It’s not great by any stretch, but you don’t have to look hard to see pieces worth keeping and even featuring in the years to come. We just didn’t get to see much of it in 2024.
I love Gutiérrez but he is a secondary or tertiary chance creator, not a “build it all around him” No. 10. Cuypers is good at what he does: box movement designed to finish off plays other guys make. Haile-Selassie has a ton of energy as a complementary piece.
It was all supposed to revolve around a true No. 10, and Shaqiri was supposed to be that guy. I’m not going to waste any more digital ink in listing all the ways he manifestly was not.
I’ll just say I’m excited to see how he’s replaced.
- Cuypers (FW): Even if they don’t want to build around him they’ve got to, as he’s under contract through 2026 at a reported $3.5m. He’s not going anywhere.
- Gutiérrez (W): I think I like him more as a playmaking right winger than on the left, where I’d hope Chicago would look for a more dynamic 1v1 threat.
- Acosta (CM): Acosta’s future is as a pure No. 6, which is the role he most often played for Berhalter on the USMNT. I think he’s got it in him to conduct the game.
- Brady (GK): A step backwards this year, but he’s still one of the best young goalkeepers in league history.
- Gutman (LB): Constantly dangerous on the overlap (when healthy).
The Fire are likely to have two open DP slots: one by virtue of Shaqiri’s departure, and one by either moving Gastón Giménez off of a DP designation, or buying him out (2025 is the final year of Giménez’s deal, and honestly a book should be written on how he was able to stick around for so long).
If they get two high-level DPs, the whole thing turns around. Think I’m wrong? Look at what happened to the Galaxy this season when they added Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil. Suddenly everybody else on the field is better and LA are dreaming of their first silverware in a decade.
A name worth keeping an eye on in Chicago’s hunt for a DP this winter: Weston McKennie. The Fire would have to spend big, but Mansueto’s never had an issue with that. And it’s a move that would make a ton of sense for Wes both financially and in terms of getting the keys to a team built around him, instead of being just a role player.
They’d still have budget to use on other spots, with center back being the obvious one to target. But the story of Chicago’s futility of the past 15 years is a story of them missing, time and again, on their DPs.
Get the coach right, get those DPs right, and this club might finally be able to turn the page.
