Fire, Berhalter announce new sporting hires in front office
The Fire announced a number of front office hires as the team retools under Director of Football and Gregg Berhalter. Eddie Rock, formerly the senior vice president of football operations with the team, has a new title and responsibilities as head of strategy, continuing his stint with the club. Darcy Norman, most recently the head of performance and performance coach with the U.S. Men’s National team is reuniting with Berhalter in Chicago, and Zayne M. Thomajan, most recently chief soccer officer with NY/NJ Gotham FC in the National Women’s Soccer League, is joining the Fire as general manager.
The new additions largely fill out the sporting side of the front office, having already announced Frank Klopas’s shift to Vice President of Football, the appointment of former Blackburn Rovers director of football Gregg Broughton as sporting director, and former Fire player Mikey Stephens as head of recruitment, working with Berhalter again after a successful stretch as head of scouting with the L.A. Galaxy.
Eddie Rock: Head of Strategy
Rock is one of the only senior members of the Fire organization to remain in a role after joining the team under previous ownership, having joined the team in 2017 after working as an agent. With the Fire, he has been responsible for overseeing the team’s analytics department, turning it into one of the most well-regarded of its kind in the league, and has been responsible for managing the team’s salary cap and immigration matters. The new role, which the team has described as a promotion, will have him continue these responsibilities while also working on longer-term strategic planning.
His work to see the Fire’s roster fit under the league’s salary cap during the previous sporting regime cannot be underestimated, finding ways to keep the Fire’s roster compliant despite often lavish wages, by league standards, given to new signings to bring them to Chicago. He was also the driving force behind the Fire’s ability to secure Green Cards quickly for players, including securing one for defender Arnaud Souquet after just a year in the country, a competitive advantage for the team since permanent residents are considered domestic players for roster purposes, freeing up valuable international slots on the roster.
Rock has been well-regarded around the league, and keeping him in Chicago is a coup of sorts for the Fire: He was one of nine people to garner votes from The Athletic’s survey of league executives earlier this year as “the next No. 2 to get a top job.”
Darcy Norman: Director of Performance
Norman reprises a role has most recently had with the U.S. Men’s National Team, which he joined in 2019, initially as a performance coach, coming on as part of Berhalter’s staff during his tenure as head coach.
The move reunites Norman with Berhatler, and brings a highly-rated executive in the field to the Fire. The team says that Norman will oversee “medical services, physical performance and nutrition and sports psychology” at every level of the organization, from the academy through the first team.
Although performance staff often operate largely behind the scenes, even small improvements in the area can be a significant boon in MLS: Restrictions on spending and lopsided rosters, with only a few coveted Designated Player and U22 Initiative spots for top-end, expensive talent, mean that even small advantages can be a significant boon for teams as they fight for results through increasingly compressed schedules.
In Norman, the Fire have a seasoned professional who has experience at the top of the game worldwide, having previously held the same role with AS Roma and having had roles with the German national team and FC Bayern.
Zayne M. Thomajan: General Manager
Thomajan returns to MLS after a season as chief soccer officer for Gotham FC in the NWSL, having previously held several roles with Austin FC, most recently as senior manager of business and sporting operations.
In addition to her professional experience, Thomajan was co-captain of Harvard’s soccer team during her time in college, winning an Ivy league title in 2016, capping off an undefeated season for the Crimson.
Her new role with the Fire, which reports directly to Berhalter, makes Thomajan one of just a just handful of women in senior roles on the sporting side of Major League Soccer front offices. With Ishwara Glassman Chrein having previously served as team President, that makes the Fire one of the only clubs in league history to have named women to senior roles on both the sporting and commercial sides of the operation.
Although the job description has changed, with the Fire saying in a statement that the role oversees “daily operations of the football department,” Thomajan becomes the first person to hold the General Manager title with Fire (Alex Boler has the title for Fire II) since Nelson Rodriguez stepped down from the role in 2020 to focus on the team’s business operations before departing the club a year later.
Analysis: What this means for the Fire
When Gregg Berhalter was named as both director of football and head coach for the Fire, a key question was how he would handle the responsibilities of both roles simultaneously. Although dual roles were once common throughout MLS, they have become increasingly rare: At the time of Berhalter’s appointment, the only other team that combined the roles was Sporting Kansas City, with Peter Vermes’s team considered something of an anachronism in MLS. (Since then, Bruce Arena has also been named sporting director and head coach of the San Jose Earthquakes.)
Although Berhalter previously held both front office and coaching responsibilities with the Columbus Crew, since he left to coach the U.S. Men’s National Team, salary budgets have greatly expanded, with a significantly increased salary cap that puts MLS outside of only the top-tier of spenders in the sport worldwide, and the introduction of the U22 Initiative that enables teams to spend handsomely to bring promising young high-end talent to the league. That’s especially true for top-spending teams like the Fire, who now have the financial resources to scour the globe and sign players that in previous years might have been bound for the top five leagues in Europe or one of the top developmental leagues just behind them.
Combined with the creation of MLS Next Pro, which finally gives MLS a formal reserve league, the job of chief soccer officers for MLS teams, regardless of formal job title, has greatly expanded even as the league has become more tactically sophisticated on the pitch, putting additional demands on coaches.
A key question for Berhalter – and the team – was where and how he would be able to delegate. The recent appointments combined with the previously-announced hires now give the Fire a significantly expanded front office. While the exact roles and responsibilities of executive positions are often difficult to discern, even for close observers, the bulked-up sporting department means Berhalter is surrounded by lieutenants of his own choosing, though, of course, having the staff available to take on the job and actually delegating the work are two different things entirely.
Whether or not more front office hires are on their way, the three moves announced today largely flesh out the team’s front office. That seems to fulfill Berhatler’s promise of filling out the front office staff “quickly,” as he stated in October, giving the team a largely full sporting staff after the fifth anniversary of the appointment of Georg Heitz in 2019. One of the themes of that offseason was how little time Heitz had to bring in new players before the start of the season, with Rodriguez having done an effective job of clearing out roster space for his successor.
Compared to Heitz, Berhalter has the benefit of experience with the league, significantly more time between his appointment and the start of the season and now, a much larger staff around him than his predecessor. That should make Fire fans hopeful that the team can avoid repeating some of the mistakes of that offseason, when the team rushed to fill all three vacant Designated Player spots. Heitz was largely off-target with those signings, eventually resorting to sending Ignacio Aliseda to sister club FC Lugano in Switzerland, allowing Robert Berić to depart after a disappointing sophomore season with the Fire, and struggling to move on from the long-term deals offered to Gastón Giménez, who remains under contract through 2025.
Berhalter and his staff have their work cut out for them: The team remains in a constricted salary cap position, even as Berhalter has said that he intends to bring a number of starters to the squad this year, and Berhalter has yet to fill out his coaching staff with just 61 days left until the Fire’s first regular season game on February 22nd.
