Marie-Louise Eta, Union Berlin’s ‘Football Goddess’, breaks new ground in Bundesliga | Bundesliga

So different, but absolutely the same. If you had wanted a clear demonstration of why exactly 1. FC Union Berlin was just the place for Marie-Louise Eta to become the first female head coach in a top five European league, you got it on Saturday afternoon. Eta made her debut at the helm in the Bundesliga match with Wolfsburg and after a week in which both she and Union were global news, with coach and club visibly taken aback by the media flocking to Berlin to see her opening press conference and debut in charge, just being able to get to work was a relief.

And there is really no place to ply your trade in Germany, or in Europe, quite like the Stadion An der Alten Försterei. As the team lineups are read out before kick-off there is a call and response, with each player’s name met with the collective reply “Fußballgott!” (Football God). On Saturday, when Eta’s name was announced, it was met with a united “Fußballgöttin!” (Football Goddess). On an extraordinary day, it was touchingly normal.

It was entirely appropriate, then, that Union’s official X account gave sexists and naysayers short (and sometimes quite sweary) shrift at this historic juncture, making sure the moment belonged to Eta and not to the loudest of the morons. Many have suggested that it could only happen at a club this, a club apart; that Union was the perfect place for such a pioneering step as a progressive, socially aware and socially responsible club. Whereas that may ring true to a certain extent female leadership is not a first for German football, with Sabrina Wittmann heading towards the completion of her second season in charge of third-tier Ingolstadt, the club coached by Ralph Hasenhüttl in the top flight a decade ago.

Eta and Wittmann share much in common beyond their gender, both recognising the step forward and potential positive effects of their appointments but both reaching this point from having put in the hard yards and having truly earned it. Both in their 30s but neither of them overnight successes, in a slight echo of the routes of Thomas Tuchel or Julian Nagelsmann.

In the case of Eta she had been here before, too, taking temporary charge of the first team alongside Marco Grote to help Union escape the relegation playoff on a dramatic final day in 2023-24 after Nenad Bjelica had been moved aside. She had paid her dues at Union and won the players’ respect over the years. Like Wittmann before her, Eta had been keen to strip back the hype and be judged on her merits; and she will be if she succeeds in steering Union away from the bottom, because this is a far from easy task.

Defeat at bottom club Heidenheim last week (a “truly alarming” performance, in the words of veteran Christopher Trimmel, restored to the XI here) had accelerated the end of Steffen Baumgart’s reign in charge but it was the culmination of just two wins from 14 in 2026. Brought in to galvanise the troops and prevent an unexpected involvement in the relegation battle, Eta was receiving a hospital pass in purely sporting terms, starting with a home game against Wolfsburg that was not quite a must-win but a really-could-do-with-winning.

And Union didn’t, despite a vastly improved performance; Eta declared herself “satisfied” with the performance despite defeat to the second-bottom team. Union were coherent and had dominated, having 26 shots to five but picked off by fine goals by Patrick Wimmer and then Dzenan Pejcinovic, 29 seconds into the second half. It appears that this is not an audition for the full-time role, though, with president Dirk Zingler seemingly shutting the door left ajar earlier this week by sporting director Horst Heldt in his pre-match interview with Sky, emphasising Eta’s role is just for the remaining games after she signed a contract to take over Union’s women’s team from next season. “If she’s really good, she’ll stay with the men,” outlined Zingler, “[and] if she’s not so good, she’ll go to the women – I can’t even have that discussion. With this, we’re doing her and women’s football as a whole a disservice.”

Union have made a common sense appointment as much as a groundbreaking one, but are aware of the potential repercussions. “It’s not about me,” Eta reflected in her own post-match press conference. “It’s about football.” That may not be entirely true but her and her team’s hard work on Saturday were the first step towards making it so.

Talking points

A more familiar scene arrived towards the end of the weekend as Bayern Munich became champions for the 35th time with a 4-2 win over Stuttgart – no one team has beaten another more in Bundesliga history. A point would have done them, with Borussia Dortmund having opened the door on Saturday with their late, late defeat at Champions League-chasing Hoffenheim, and at the beginning of the weekend all Bayern had to do was to better the BVB result.

Vincent Kompany’s team do not, however, do things by halves. After going behind to a Chris Führich goal for the visitors they scored three times in less than five-and-a-half minutes to clean it up – and then brought on Harry Kane (who scored the fourth) and Michael Olise at half-time, having made eight changes following their midweek exertions against Real Madrid. They may not have the biggest squad in the club’s history but they have one of the strongest, and most exhilarating ones. Bayern are thrilling in a statistical sense too – this salvo took them to 109 goals in 30 games, having beaten the 1971-72 side’s 101-goal record for a Bundesliga season last week. Kane won’t beat Robert Lewandowski’s single-season-scoring record as Kompany manages him for other commitments (which suits England too) but setting a perhaps never-to-be-beaten collective high watermark, with four games still to go, feels far more fitting.

Leverkusen needed to take advantage of Stuttgart’s mission impossible but undid a lot of their good work of recent weeks in closing the gap to the top four by slipping up at home to Augsburg. They had the chances, with 36 efforts at goal (the first time since statistics have been kept that 35 or more shots from a team in the Bundesliga hasn’t resulted in a win) but the visitors’ goalkeeper Finn Dahmen played a blinder, even if his coach Manuel Baum noted that it’s “not necessarily desirable in terms of defending.” Dahmen’s opposite number Mark Flekken, meanwhile, called talk of a crisis at Leverkusen “utter nonsense” before Wednesday’s Pokal semi-final with Bayern but they have no more remaining jokers up their sleeves and, with Kasper Hjulmand’s team facing tough remaining opponents including Leipzig and Stuttgart, they may need Bayern’s help to sneak Germany up the Uefa coefficient table and to snare the Bundesliga an extra Champions League berth.