Inside Chicago Fire FC Coach Gregg Berhalter’s Post-Game Tequila Ritual
“Tequila? It’s got nothing to do with playing soccer,” says Gregg Berhalter, coach of MLS’s Chicago Fire FC. “At the end of the day excessive alcohol intake is not good for performance. But when I get to shut soccer off…”
Of course, Berhalter, 52, has never entirely shut off soccer. A living legend of the sport, he is probably best known for his six-year tenure as the head coach of theUnited States Men's National Team (USMNT), during which he led the youngest squad in the 2022 World Cup to the round of 16. Before that, his decorated international playing career spanned 18 years and included a stint on the USMNT as a defender.
“I’ve lived in so many places,” says Berhalter, an intense New Jersey native whose four children have grown up everywhere from Stockholm to Munich to Columbus, Ohio.
Courtesy Chicago Fire FC
In 2024, Berhalter took over as head coach and director of football for the perpetually underachieving Chicago Fire; he promptly turned them into a high-octane offensive force, leading them to their first playoffs appearance in seven years—and their first postseason win in 16 years. With his second season about to launch, the team seems ready to take the next step.
“The most important thing he's changed is culture, and having a bond with the entire team,” midfielder Brian Gutiérrez told ESPN.com. “In recent times we didn't have that camaraderie, and now it shows on the field.”
So, what does tequila have to do with it? After home games, Berhalter decompresses at his Lake View home with his wife, Rosalind, where they chill out to hip-hop or house music and sip a glass of blanco or añejo. “I would say one or two max,” Berhalter says. “I know what comes next tomorrow when I have to analyze the game.” Lately, he’s been enjoying Fortaleza Tequila Añejo, a handcrafted Jalisco stunner that’s been slow-roasted in traditional brick ovens, crushed using a volcanic tahona wheel, and aged for approximately 18 months in American oak barrels.
Courtesy Chicago Fire FC
“As I’ve gotten older, I started to appreciate tequila as a sipping drink,” says Berhalter. “The flavor, the purity of it, the complex tasting notes you get.” With Fortaleza, that means a velvety-smooth ride with notes of caramel, honey, and oak that linger on the tongue.
The post-game tequila is a ritual crucial to Berhalter’s success, a rare moment of calm for a man who doesn’t often slow down. And it feels like a spiritual bridge to a great bit of soccer folklore.
During the glory years of one of soccer’s greatest teams—Mexico’s legendary C.D. Guadalajara, better known as Chivas—players routinely took shots of tequila at a local bar before games. The agave flowing through their veins, they reasoned, would empower them to play with joy and looseness; between 1957 and 1965 Chivas won seven championships, so they must have been onto something.
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Berhalter, of course, is a man of his time. In an era of nutritionists and sports science, the idea of soccer players downing pre-game “caballitos” is almost laughable. But the game as a raw expression of community spirit? That part is alive and well. On a recent December evening, Berhalter sipped a glass of tequila at La Luna, a bustling restaurant in the heart of Pilsen, a Mexican stronghold on Chicago’s Lower West Side.
The Chicago Fire’s connection to the neighborhood runs deep: The team’s training ground includes a Mexican-style mural of the team done by a Pilsen artist as well as a coffee bar that brings in baristas from Pilsen to make coffees. Sixty-five percent of the Fire’s fan base identifies as Hispanic, Latin, or Asian, reflecting Chicago’s diversity as well as the team’s roster, which includes players from 14 different countries.
At La Luna, Berhalter’s preferred selection is extra-añejo Tears of Llorona, a micro-batch rarity aged for five years in barrels that previously held Scotch, brandy or sherry. “Start by smelling that vanilla,” says Berhalter. “When I smell good tequila, I smell warm. It has that warm bite.”
Tears of Llorona (named for La Llorona, a weeping ghost famous in Latin American mythology) echoes with dark cocoa tones and brandy-soaked cherries: It’s akin to a high-end Cognac, but moodier and altogether more interesting—a clean and complex sipper perfect for a cold winter night.
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As soccer has gotten better, so, obviously, has tequila. Berhalter isn’t the kind of guy to bloviate about the artistry or the toil that goes into its production, but when he talks about soccer, its complexity, its beauty, the variations on patterns he can’t help but recognize, it’s easy to imagine what draws him to tequila.
“I would describe Gregg as hyper-focused on the details and getting the little things right,” says Dan Cohen, his friend and senior director of communications and brand for the Chicago Fire. “That may speak to why he likes the taste of tequila—that time and the effort of making something good.”
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Perhaps inevitably, the bond between the spirit and the sport has become codified by multi-million-dollar marketing engines aimed squarely at loyal fans. It is virtually impossible to watch a Major League Soccer match without witnessing the sleek branding of Jose Cuervo or Gran Centenario.
And that’s the thing that Gregg Berhalter intuitively understands about tequila. Whether it’s a swagger shot in a Guadalajara cantina, a mellow nightcap in a Chicago living room, or a cocktail in the grandstands with 20,000 screaming fans united in their love of the Beautiful Game, the expression of joy is the same.