Gregg Berhalter renews his title as ‘striker whisperer’

Cuypers arrived in MLS in 2024 with a massive $12 million transfer fee and a questionable goal-scoring report. The 27-year-old scored simply six targets for Belgian workforce 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 Metropolis in 2024. 

2025, although? That is been a totally completely different story. Cuypers has eight targets in twelve video games and he is pushing Chicago up the Jap Convention desk. He is outperforming all his MLS friends and he is earned each penny of his $12 million switch charge. Cuypers credit new coach Gregg Berhalter, previously of the U. S. Males’s Nationwide Crew, for a lot of his good kind.

“His means of enjoying is fairly clear for us as a workforce. It is what we wanted after an absence of possibly stability or identification final 12 months, that gamers might fall again into a transparent identification,” Cuypers said.,, by way of Charles Boehm of the MLS web site. “After which it is as much as us to execute it on the pitch. But it surely certainly makes it simpler when the rules are clear.”

Many American soccer followers solely know Berhalter for his unlucky stint with the USMNT, and that is a disgrace. He is an clever coach with a robust report of success in MLS. Berhalter has many skills as a frontrunner, however none shine stronger than his means to develop strikers like Cuypers. The Belgian is the third consecutive MLS scorer that Berhalter has become a league-leading expertise.

Berhalter’s first striker venture got here in 2015, when MLS legend Kei Kamara arrived on the Columbus Crew. Kamara was coming off two middling seasons in Kansas Metropolis (11 targets in 2012, seven targets in 2013) and a failed mortgage spell in England (4 targets with Middlesbrough in 2014.) Berhalter thought a easy change—shifting Kamara from a rangy vast position to an old-school down-the-middle putting place—may unlock  Kamara, and he was 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. As soon as hyped as the subsequent nice American striker, Zardes’s profession had stuttered to a halt inside the Galaxy system. He scored simply eight targets throughout three seasons earlier than being shipped to Ohio.

Zardes wanted a confidence enhance, and Berhalter gave it to him. He took the “subsequent huge factor” weight off Zardes’s shoulders and had him deal with serving to the workforce as an alternative. The outcomes spoke for themselves: in his debut season with Columbus, Zardes scored 19 targets and received MLS’s coveted Comeback Participant of the 12 months 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 fascinating one. Actually is among the most centered gamers I’ve ever seen, I’ve ever been round,” he said, by way of Boehm. “I am amazed watching him within the penalty field, how he finishes, how he is capable of put the ball on course with no time, beneath plenty of strain. So to me, there’s simply plenty of upside with him.”

If Berhalter can do with Cuypers what he did with Kamara and Zardes, then the Chicago Hearth simply may need 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 is the restrict for Berhalter and his males.

The Chicago Hearth will return to MLS motion on Saturday, Could 17 towards Charlotte FC.