Union Berlin’s Marie-Louise Eta became the first female head coach to win a game in European soccer’s top five men’s leagues as she oversaw a 3-1 victory against Mainz in the German Bundesliga on Sunday.
Eta punched the air and joined her players to applaud Union’s fans as she celebrated her first win in the fourth game of her five-game tenure as interim coach.
“You’re happy, you want to win games. That’s always the case and so it was today as well,” she told broadcaster DAZN when asked if it was a release of pressure. “The way it happened was great too, how we managed to pull it off.”
Late goals from Oliver Burke in the 88th minute and Josip Juranovic in stoppage time turned a draw into a win to move Union up to 12th in the Bundesliga table. Earlier, Mainz’s Sheraldo Becker had scored to cancel out Andrej Ilic’s opener for Union.
It was the first win for Union since March. Eta took over when the club fired Steffen Baumgart last month. She had one draw and two losses before Sunday’s win.
While Eta, an experienced youth and assistant coach, has previously acknowledged there’s a “social impact” to her historic head coach role, she’s keen to stress that results come first.
“It hasn’t been about that,” she told DAZN on Sunday when asked how she’d like people to view her time in charge. “It’s been about doing the job as well as possible, getting points, winning games, and that’s what we’ve worked for each day. We’ve invested a lot so it’s great that we could get the three points here today, show a good performance, I think, and that’s important for me, too.”
Eta’s time as head coach of the Union men’s team is due to end next week when Union hosts Augsburg in its last game of the season. She has already agreed to take charge of the Union women’s team for next season.
The game was interrupted for several minutes in the first half as Union fans threw tennis balls onto the field in a protest against league scheduling.
Mainz, led by former Union coach Urs Fischer, is 10th.
Freiburg beaten
Two goals from Igor Matanovic were not enough to stop Europa League finalist Freiburg losing 3-2 at Hamburger SV in the Bundesliga on Sunday.
Bakery Jatta opened the scoring for Hamburg when he was left unmarked but Matanovic soon leveled for Freiburg. Goals from Luka Vušković and Fabio Baldé put Hamburg back in control in the second half and Matanović’s 87th-minute header proved only a consolation goal for Freiburg.
The loss is a blow to seventh-place Freiburg’s hopes of qualifying for the Conference League via the Bundesliga. Freiburg could yet end up in the Champions League with a win over Aston Villa in the final of the Europa League on May 20. Hamburg moves up a place to 11th.
Relegation showdown looms
The Bundesliga is set for a final-day relegation battle next week with three teams on the same number of points seeking one shot at survival.
Heidenheim beat Cologne 3-1 on Sunday to move up to 17th, level on points with Wolfsburg in 16th and St. Pauli in 18th. Midfielder Jan Schöppner scored twice to end a six-month goal drought in the Bundesliga.
The teams in 17th and 18th are relegated automatically and the team in 16th faces a two-leg promotion-relegation playoff against a team from the second division. Wolfsburg and St. Pauli play each other next week, and Heidenheim hosts Mainz.
Heidenheim coach Frank Schmidt has been in charge for 19 years, overseeing promotion from the regional fourth tier and even a European campaign in the Conference League last season. He has yet to experience relegation.
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