As the world’s media crammed into the tiny news conference room in south-east Berlin on Thursday, Marie-Louise Eta could not help but look faintly amused.
“It’s good to see so many people here and I totally understand that this is a big topic. But for me it has always just been about football and working with people,” Union Berlin’s new head coach said.
However, as Eta knows well, she will make football history when her side host Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga on Saturday.
Appointed as interim coach until the end of the season after the sacking of Steffen Baumgart last weekend, 34-year-old Eta will be the first female to take charge of a men’s team in one of the top five European leagues.
It is a milestone that has made global headlines, even before a ball is kicked on her watch.
On Thursday Eta was keen to reframe the story, noting she was “far from the first woman working in professional men’s football” while also recognising those who see her appointment as having “a signalling effect”.
This, after all, is not her first rodeo.
In the 2023-24 season she became the first female assistant coach in the men’s Bundesliga, helping Union Berlin to safety in a dramatic relegation battle.
Now in the top job, the hype is bigger. On Tuesday morning dozens of journalists lined up in the drizzle to watch Eta’s first training session.
Eta appeared to have an immediate rapport with the players, many of whom she worked with during her previous spell with the men’s team.
“It helps that I know a lot of the players and the staff already. My first impression is that the team is very open,” she said.
“I am often asked whether it is different to coach men and women and I always say no.
“It’s about football and it’s about people. You have to build a relationship with the person in front of you, because in the end it is about trust.”
A coach from the class of Hurzeler and Rohl
As a player, Eta grew up idolising David Beckham and had a successful career as a midfielder in the women’s Bundesliga.
She represented Germany at youth level and won the Champions League with Turbine Potsdam in 2010 before ending her career early because of injury in 2018.
When she earned her professional coaching badge in 2023, she was the only woman in a class that also included current Brighton manager Fabian Hurzeler and Rangers boss Danny Rohl.
She joined Union as a youth-team coach later that year and quickly became a popular figure at the club.
As well as her brief spell with the men in 2024, she also enjoyed success with the under-19s and was part of the coaching staff that led Union’s women team to Bundesliga promotion last season.
As a result, while it may have turned heads elsewhere, Eta’s appointment came as no surprise in Berlin because she is seen as a safe pair of hands with valuable experience at all levels of the game.
A few hours after her appointment Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel said Union “could not have made a better choice”, external as interim coach.
Known to everyone simply as Loui, Eta was the natural choice and her appointment has proved popular among Union’s passionate fanbase.
“I was really happy and it didn’t surprise me at all,” Cornelia Wolter, a season-ticket holder and member of fan club Grenzenlos Eisern, told BBC Sport.
“She knows the club and the players really well and is very popular among fans.”
“Loui is our new Iron Lady,” another fan group Ecke Nord wrote, external on social media, a reference to Union’s nickname, ‘the Irons’.
Not all reactions have been supportive, however. This week the club were forced to defend Eta from a wave of sexist abuse on social media.
“I never read the comments in social media,” she said. “They say a lot more about the people who are posting them than they do about anyone else.”
Asked whether she thought the abuse showed that German society was going backwards on gender equality, Eta said she hoped to be a source of inspiration.
“It’s obviously good if it opens doors and maybe shows young women what is possible for them to achieve in any walk of life,” she said.
Aligning men and women’s teams
Eta’s appointment arrives as Union are positioning themselves to be pioneers on gender equality.
The club only professionalised their women’s team in 2023, but are now building one of the most ambitious projects in German women’s football.
The men’s and women’s teams share the Alte Forsterei stadium and the women draw some of the highest average attendances in Europe’s top leagues.
The two sides will become even more aligned in future, with Union building a new training complex to house both teams.
“Two teams, one professional football department – that’s our approach,” club president Dirk Zingler said, external last year.
Eta is the face of that approach and could end up at the centre of a tug of war between the men’s and women’s teams.
Just two weeks ago she signed a contract to become women’s head coach from the start of next season.
Yet the club have not ruled out the possibility that she could take over the men on a permanent basis in the summer.
“Union is a great club and to me it doesn’t matter if I’m coaching the under-19s, the women or the men – I’m just happy to be here,” Eta said.
“For now, I’m just focused on being as successful as possible with the men’s team in the next few weeks.”
