Gregg Berhalter renews his identify as ‘striker whisperer’

Cuypers arrived in MLS in 2024 with a huge $12 million switch charge and a questionable goal-scoring document. The 27-year-old scored simply six targets for Belgian group Gent within the 2023-24 season and did not do a lot better in his first season in Chicago, netting simply 10 targets in 31 video games within the Windy City in 2024. 

2025, despite the fact that? That’s been an absolutely other tale. Cuypers has 8 targets in twelve video games and he is pushing Chicago up the Eastern Conference desk. He’s outperforming all his MLS friends and he is earned each and every penny of his $12 million switch charge. Cuypers credit new trainer Gregg Berhalter, previously of the U. S. Men’s National Team, for far of his excellent shape.

“His way of playing is pretty clear for us as a team. It’s what we needed after a lack of maybe stability or identity last year, that players could fall back into a clear identity,” Cuypers said.,, via Charles Boehm of the MLS website. “And then it’s up to us to execute it on the pitch. But it surely makes it easier when the guidelines are clear.”

Many American football lovers handiest know Berhalter for his unlucky stint with the USMNT, and that’s the reason a disgrace. He’s an clever trainer with a robust document of good fortune in MLS. Berhalter has many abilities as a pace-setter, however none shine more potent than his skill to increase strikers like Cuypers. The Belgian is the 3rd consecutive MLS scorer that Berhalter has changed into a league-leading skill.

Berhalter’s first striker mission got here in 2015, when MLS legend Kei Kamara arrived on the Columbus Crew. Kamara was once coming off two middling seasons in Kansas City (11 targets in 2012, seven targets in 2013) and a failed mortgage spell in England (4 targets with Middlesbrough in 2014.) Berhalter idea a easy transfer—transferring Kamara from a rangy vast function to an old-school down-the-middle hanging place—may unencumber  Kamara, and he was once proper. Kamara scored 22 targets in MLS in 2015.

Berhalter repeated the trick in 2018, when Gyasi Zardes arrived in Columbus from the L.A. Galaxy. Once hyped as the following nice American striker, Zardes’s occupation had stuttered to a halt throughout the Galaxy device. He scored simply 8 targets throughout 3 seasons ahead of being shipped to Ohio.

Zardes wanted a self belief spice up, and Berhalter gave it to him. He took the “next big thing” weight off Zardes’s shoulders and had him center of attention on serving to the group as an alternative. The effects spoke for themselves: in his debut season with Columbus, Zardes scored 19 targets and received MLS’s coveted Comeback Player of the Year award. He even earned himself a beginning spot within the entrance line of the USMNT.

With Cuypers, Berhalter is at it once more. 

“Hugo is an interesting one. Really is one of the most focused players I’ve ever seen, I’ve ever been around,” he mentioned, by means of Boehm. “I’m amazed staring at him within the penalty field, how he finishes, how he is ready to place the ball on the right track and not using a time, underneath a large number of force. So to me, there is simply a large number of upside with him.”

If Berhalter can do with Cuypers what he did with Kamara and Zardes, then the Chicago Fire simply may have the oomph to make the MLS Playoffs for the primary time since 2017. The membership already beat league chief Vancouver and held Messi’s Inter Miami to a 0-0 draw. The sky’s the restrict for Berhalter and his males.

The Chicago Fire will go back to MLS motion on Saturday, May 17 towards Charlotte FC.