Gregg Berhalter is back in MLS — and the Chicago Fire wound back the clock to get him

Gregg Berhalter wasn’t gone for long. 

Less than three months after being fired following the U.S. men’s national team’s failure to get out of their group at the Copa America, the former USMNT manager is back in the domestic game. On Tuesday, the Chicago Fire announced Berhalter as their new coach — and their new director of football, a role that will involve Berhalter overseeing every piece of the Fire’s sporting operations. 

Berhalter will replace Frank Klopas as Chicago’s head coach and Georg Heitz as head of the team’s front office.

“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,” Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto said in a statement. 

Mansueto noted later in the same statement that Berhalter isn’t a stranger to a dual coaching and front office role. Before he took over the national team, the New Jersey native spent years with the Columbus Crew, balancing the sporting director and manager titles. 

Still, as Berhalter returns to MLS no doubt ready to rely on some of his past experiences in Columbus, he’s returning to a different league than the one he left in 2018.

Ceding organizational control to the coach was once the go-to model in MLS. Now, though, every team in the league outside of Sporting Kansas City has moved away from having the same person manage from the sidelines and manage the front office. Until Berhalter’s move to Chicago was announced Tuesday morning, Peter Vermes, whose SKC team has finished no higher than eighth in the Western Conference in each of the last three seasons, was the last of his kind.

The MLS landscape has become increasingly complex as the league has aged, making it increasingly difficult for any one person to perform well in two jobs within that landscape.