Fire would love to be part of the battle for Chicago’s sporting soul
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Home to 2.7 million residents, Chicago is the United States’ third-largest city by population and arguably its greatest sporting hub.
It was one of four cities shortlisted to host the 2016 Olympics, won by Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, and it is home to many of the nation’s most iconic sporting names. The enduring cross-city rivalry between the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox has seen each win three World Series titles, while the Chicago Bears, an NFL founding member, and the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks also have deep roots in the city’s rich sporting tapestry.
It was never going to be easy for the Chicago Fire, one of the first MLS expansion teams in 1998, to emulate the achievements of its hometown’s sporting institutions. “Our job is to put our name in with those iconic names in Chicago identity,” Fire sporting director Gregg Broughton tells The Athletic. “When the Bears were in the playoffs last winter, the whole city stopped. Every bar had a queue several hundred metres long to get in. That is the passion and belonging we want to tap into.”
Since 2019, the Fire have been fully owned by billionaire entrepreneur Joe Mansueto, born in the Chicago metropolitan area. Mansueto is privately funding a new soccer-specific stadium in downtown Chicago, built on former industrial land. The 22,000-person capacity McDonald’s Park (the fast-food chain is headquartered in Chicago) is expected to open in 2028.
Soldier Field hosted the USMNT vs. Germany friendly on June 6, but will not be a venue for the World Cup. (Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images)
“The aim is to create high demand, with everyone desperate to come and watch this team play,” Broughton says of the stadium, which will be part of an entertainment district, located along the Chicago River and south of Roosevelt Road in the city’s South Loop neighborhood. The stadium’s slightly smaller capacity, compared to the Fire’s 23,500 average attendance in 2025, is deliberate. “We are doing well with our crowds — that base is incredible. But we want tickets to be difficult to buy; we want regular sellouts. This stadium will have the steepest stands in the league. We want that atmosphere there every game, for it to be a spectacle, an event everyone wants to be at.”
The Fire’s current home, Soldier Field, can accommodate 63,500 fans, but it’s often two-thirds empty during the team’s games, and it’s not designed for soccer. “When we played Inter Miami, it was a sellout,” recalls Broughton. “A third of the stadium were in Fire tops, a third were in the pink of Miami and a third in Argentina shirts to watch Lionel Messi.”
Revenue for that match day would have been impressive, but for the Fire, the aim is to create an identity and sense of belonging that sets the club apart. Broughton has an ideal background for driving this change.
After a decade in English soccer, where he led the academies of Luton Town and Norwich City — and won the FA Youth Cup in 2013 with the latter — Broughton joined Norwegian club Bodo/Glimt in 2017. Bodo, located approximately 300km north of the Arctic Circle, had never won a league title nor made inroads in European competition.
Between 2020 and 2024, the club won four Norwegian league titles and reached the Europa League quarterfinal in 2022. A run of 13 consecutive home wins in Europe featured two victories over Roma, then managed by Jose Mourinho, including an iconic 6-1 triumph. In 2024-25, Bodo reached the Europa League semifinal, and this season the club defeated Manchester City, Atletico Madrid and Inter in the Champions League, before falling at the last-16 stage. Comprised almost exclusively of Norwegian players, they are European soccer’s biggest overachievers.
“The major lesson of Bodo is the importance of total clarity in identity,” Broughton, 50, explains. Prior to Broughton’s arrival in northern Norway, Bodo CEO Frode Thomassen led the club, developing a team character based on the area’s history of remoteness, hardship and exclusion.
Bodo’s Norwegian Cup success in 1975 was a vindication for northern Norway, which had previously been excluded from the Norwegian top division, largely due to geography but also due to perception. Those cup-winning 1975 players regularly meet for coffee to oversee the current squad’s training sessions.
Broughton explains how the club fostered a culture built around prominent themes of “bravery” and close ties to northern Norway, where the economy was historically driven by fishing in dangerous waters. “Lots of people never came back from those trips,” he says. Utilising the local work ethic and sense of otherness created a mindset that provided a basis for the club’s strategy.
“We wanted to confront and embrace the area’s difficult history, because that is what made Bodo unique,” says Broughton. “Once that identity was established, we aligned that with a set playing style: 4-3-3, just one holding midfielder, two wingers who were aggressive, who could go inside and outside. A demand for the team to be aggressive, to take risks within that structure.”
Broughton worked at Bodo during their initial rise from 2017 to 2022. (Courtesy of Gregg Broughton)
The playing style emerged from the identity, and the recruitment followed. “That becomes significantly easier when you are identifying more defined profiles of players,” Broughton adds. “Then you align with the youth academy and focus on players who understand the demands.” Bodo’s first-team squad is dominated by players of Norwegian citizenship, six of whom are graduates of the academy.
“Clarity about a club’s identity will make you or break you,” Broughton says of his role as a sporting director. “That includes creating a bridge between academy and first team, but it’s also about recruitment, about the medical side, how to prepare and condition players.”
Broughton believes Bodo’s model is comparable to those at Brighton & Hove Albion, Brentford and Bournemouth — all of which finished in this season’s Premier League top half. Their successes, he argues, are built on frameworks in which they can lose key individuals — players, managers, non-playing staff — and still thrive. “Their models can withstand that turbulence because individuals, while important, are replaceable.”
Kjetil Knutsen has been Bodo’s head coach since 2018. “He is a super coach, and he has fostered a remarkable culture,” says Broughton. “But I believe Bodo could withstand a coaching change and continue on their trajectory.”
Broughton was appointed as the Chicago Fire’s sporting director in 2024.
There are similarities between the Fire and the Bodo club he joined in 2017. The Fire have not won an MLS Cup since 1998, and it has been two decades since their most recent trophy: the U.S. Open Cup. Last year’s MLS playoffs appearance was their first since 2017, and they have not advanced to the last four since 2009.
“Our aim is to win championships,” says Broughton. He has spent the past year evaluating which skills are “transferable” from European soccer into MLS, but adds he “acknowledges the differences” of a franchise model with a closed league system. This season, the Fire are third in the Eastern Conference, with 26 points after 14 matches.
The league is now on a seven-week break during the World Cup, with the Fire’s centre-backs Mbekezeli Mbokazi (South Africa) and Joel Waterman (Canada) featuring alongside goalkeeper Chris Brady (United States) — the second Fire youth graduate to feature for the club, after Mexico’s Brian Gutiérrez (now at Guadalajara).
Chicago will not be in the World Cup spotlight this summer, but the city remains a key part of the nation’s soccer present and its future.