EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of Major League Soccer's 30th season, MLSsoccer.com is exploring untold stories about all 30 clubs. "30 Clubs, 30 Stories" will be unveiled throughout 2025.
When Mauricio Pineda was young, his soccer-obsessed father would take his kids anywhere he could find in Chicagoland to get the ball at their feet.
“He would take us to the park or wherever he could find space for us to play. He’d be training us there,” Pineda remembers.
The dedication paid off. Mauricio is currently a midfielder for Chicago Fire FC. His older brother Victor played for the team in the 2010s after signing as the first-ever homegrown player in the club’s history. But both look at their younger brother, current Fire academy player Oscar, and have to laugh. He doesn’t know how good he has it.
“It’s funny to see my younger brother training here in this training facility now because I could only imagine being an academy player and showing up to this facility,” Mauricio said.
Mauricio and Oscar now train at the Endeavor Health Performance Center, the Fire’s new training complex that opened in Chicago in March. The facility provides everything clubs want to get an edge on the competition in 2025. It features five full-size fields, a fitness center, lounges, dining areas where players can eat breakfast or have a snack together, classrooms for academy players, a film room, cryotherapy and plenty more to help players improve or unwind.
Beyond the amenities, it represents the club’s ambition: The desire to connect with the city, giving Chicago a team to proudly call its own.
“It’s a place players actually want to be at. You come to training and want to stay here. They really make this our second home and a place we want to be and get better,” Pineda said. “It helps it has a view of the Chicago skyline. You see that every day and really grasp what you’re playing for … the beautiful city we represent every time we put the jersey on.”
Reconnecting with your roots
That view, and the Chicago address, is very intentional.
Since Joe Mansueto became the owner and chairman of the Fire in 2019, he has looked to connect the club more deeply with the city. Academy players from Chicago neighborhoods can help build that connection, but a physical presence in the city was also important. The team moved back to Soldier Field, and confirmed in December that it is conducting research on building a soccer-specific stadium in the city.
“Chicago is a world-class city; it deserves a world-class soccer club,” Mansueto said when the performance center opened. “So, the club used to play in the southwest suburbs, train in the southwest suburbs, and to be more relevant in Chicago, I thought it was important to move down to Soldier Field, play in the city, and then train in the city. And that is what this facility now represents.”
The idea is to get more elite players like the Pineda brothers into the facility and on the pathway that eventually will see them winning games for the Fire.
“We talk about doing it for the city of Chicago and uniting the city of Chicago, and this is a part of it that will certainly help do that,” said Gregg Berhalter. “You can get players from all different neighborhoods from the city, bring them together, train them and hopefully get them on the field for the first team and help children, people in this community, reach their goals through soccer.”
"Embracing the community"
Berhalter is being charged with far more than simply developing academy players, of course. Already a Chicago resident thanks to his time coaching the US men’s national team, but also bringing experience having coached and played in Europe, Berhalter arrived as Director of Football and Head Coach in October 2024. He reports directly to Mansueto and oversees the team’s entire sporting operations – from the first team down to the academy.
The coach said when speaking to Mansueto, he understood his vision went beyond winning a trophy to trying to leave a lasting legacy in the city.
“The city is rich with sports history, rich with soccer fans. It’s really about building something the city can be proud of – through facilities, through on-field performance, infrastructure, potential stadium,” Berhalter said. “He’s really committed to this city. It’s really down to all the details, not just the soccer team. It’s what caterers are we working with, what coffee providers? Really trying to be local and embracing the community of Chicago.”
Turning words into results
Berhalter makes clear, though, one of the biggest keys to reigniting the Fire is for the first team to become a regular contender for MLS Cup – and add to the team’s trophy case that has looked the same since 2006. While Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs became known for a decades-long title drought, Chicago is no different from any sports city in that it wants to see a winning team lift trophies.
“We want to be a top organization. It’s easy to talk about. It’s harder to do,” he said. “But it’s really about trying to change the mindset of the group and realize nothing comes easy and it’s what we’re willing to put into this process to get the necessary results – the results that are going to lead us to the fans coming to the stadium, the city getting behind us. That’s why we do it.”
The team’s vision is a starting XI full of Chicago natives who came up like the Pineda family: Doing drills at recreation centers and playing in their neighborhoods before moving to the academy and elevating their skillsets at the Endeavor Health Performance Center.
Especially in the near term, it will take established players wanting to come to Chicago. The city speaks for itself, says head of recruitment Michael Stephens, a Chicago-area native who lifted a pair of MLS Cups with the LA Galaxy in between playing with the Chicago Fire Premier in the USL PDL and suiting up for the Fire in 2015 and 2016.
But the increased commitment to infrastructure will help boost the Fire’s profile internationally and can help woo talent who may otherwise be enticed by another club, league or living situation.
“One of the first things we do when we’re starting to recruit a player now is send them what we have to make them better – whether it’s young players or older players,” Stephens said. “When you have a facility like this that provides everything that they need to improve, I think it just makes the project a little bit more interesting.
“From the personal side, we’re in a nice part of Chicago – close to the West Loop, close to River North, places people can live. Both of those things are really important for recruitment and for performance of players when they get here.”
The Fire hope that with top players drawn in by the chance to join the project and to live and work with Chicago, plus getting local kids into elite facilities to get high-level coaching, they’ll be able to resonate with fans in a sports-mad city.
“We want to be essential to Chicago,” Berhalter said. “We know it takes time. It starts with what we do on the field.
“Chicago is a sports city. The Chicago Fire have played a role in it and have won a championship, but we want to return to winning ways. When we do that, we’re certainly going to get people behind us.”
