The first woman to manage a men’s team in Europe’s major leagues on ‘shouting back’, her coaching influences and fighting the drop
I
t was shaping up to be a standard Saturday night of homework for Marie-Louise Eta when the telephone rang and sent her life into overdrive. A nosediving Union Berlin had decided to part ways with their manager, Steffen Baumgart, and had a quick solution in mind. They wanted the talented coach of their under-19 team to step up for the rest of the season and it meant tearing her away from plans to face Mainz’s youngsters the following day.
“I was at home on my laptop preparing,” she says. “Then our president, Dirk Zingler, called me and said: ‘You’re doing it now. I’m counting on you.’ The call didn’t last long. It wasn’t easy for me to announce in our under-19 group chat that I wouldn’t be able to take the game any more.”
If that level of consideration speaks volumes for Eta, perhaps it is because her appointment to lead the Union Berlin men’s team felt more exceptional to those outside than anyone operating within. Union had asked themselves who fitted the role best: they landed on a brilliant, energetic coaching mind who had overseen Bundesliga games during a previous stint as assistant manager. She had hardly been parachuted in from nowhere to make headlines.
