CHICAGO — With both the U.S. and Germany men’s national teams using the Chicago Fire’s facilities ahead of Saturday’s final pre-World Cup tuneup, the MLS team’s head coach was a gracious host.He spoke with both teams and even personally led the visiting German media on a tour of the club’s state-of-the-art training facility.On a different timeline, though, this coach would have been a visitor rather than the host. Instead, he would have been making his own final preparations for a World Cup on home soil.“It’s a little bit of irony that they are here before their last game,” that coach, former USMNT boss Gregg Berhalter, told assembled media on Friday.Berhalter was relieved from his duties as USMNT head coach in the summer of 2024 after a disappointing group stage exit at Copa América. Maurico Pochettino replaced him in the fall. Ahead of 2025, the Fire hired Berhalter as head coach and sporting director, and he has led the team on its best two-season run in about a dozen years.His overlap with the current U.S. team stretches to his former players and even his son. He’s now a USMNT soccer dad. Yet he harbors no ill will toward the man who succeeded him. He’s a supporter.“Me and Mauricio have a good relationship,” Berhalter said.It is indeed ironic that Berhalter’s new team is hosting the USMNT before the World Cup kicks off — even more so when you consider the opponent, Germany, was at the heart of Berhalter’s most memorable World Cup moment as a player, when his shot hit Torsten Frings’ arm on the goal line in the 2002 quarterfinals. But viewed in another light, it is also fitting and apropos for Berhalter to be around. He took over a program coming off its lowest modern-era moment, after it failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.Changes were coming to a program in need of a complete rebuild with a young generation of players ready to lead it forward. Berhalter helped develop those young talents and rebuild the culture, leading the team to the 2022 World Cup through a difficult qualifying cycle and advancing to the round of 16 in Qatar. His DNA is very much ingrained within this group.“One thing we have to remember is when I got them they were young, they were babies,” Berhalter said. “They were just learning what it takes to be a professional athlete. Now when I see them, they’re men. They’re adults. … It’s an amazing thing to see. I can’t believe it, they’re grown up.”