Union Berlin has surprisingly left Coach Steffen Baumgart separated and promoted Marie-Louise Eta to go coach till the top of the season, turning into the primary girl in Bundesliga historical past. The capital membership introduced the sudden resolution on Saturday night shortly earlier than midnight. Just a few hours earlier, the Berliners had misplaced 3-1 at backside crew Heidenheim. The lead of the eleventh within the desk over relegation place 16 remains to be seven factors.
Along with the 54-year-old Baumgart, his assistant coaches Danilo de Souza and Kevin McKenna additionally should go. “We have had a fully disappointing second half of the season to this point and we’re not letting ourselves be blinded by the standings within the desk: our scenario remains to be threatening and we urgently want factors to make sure we keep within the league,” defined the skilled soccer director Horst Heldt in line with the announcement.
Heldt: We now not had any conviction
“Two wins from fourteen video games because the winter break and the performances proven in the previous few weeks don’t give us the arrogance that we can reverse the pattern within the present scenario,” Heldt continued. “We have now due to this fact determined to begin once more now.”
Baumgart’s sporting finish at Union additionally comes as a shock as a result of the Berliners had solely prematurely prolonged the contract with the previous Union participant in January. The Rostock native took over the Köpenick crew as coach firstly of January 2025 and led them to thirteenth place final season.
In Eta, a lady would be the head coach of a males’s Bundesliga crew for the primary time. For Eta, who will take over Berlin’s Bundesliga girls from the summer time, the duty isn’t fully new territory. The 34-year-old had already accompanied Köpenicker’s relegation battle as an assistant coach from November 2023 to Could 2024.
“I’m happy that Marie-Louise Eta has agreed to tackle this job on an interim foundation earlier than she turns into head coach of the ladies’s skilled crew in the summertime as deliberate,” mentioned Heldt. She is “satisfied that we’ll get the decisive factors with the crew,” added Eta.
Profession as a participant ends prematurely
As a soccer participant, she loved nice success with Turbine Potsdam throughout her lively profession. Again then below the title Marie-Louise Bagehorn, she received the German championship thrice with the membership and the Champions League title in 2010. Because of a number of accidents, she needed to finish her taking part in profession on the age of 26.
After that, her teaching profession shortly took off. She initially labored within the youth crew at Werder Bremen and most not too long ago performed for the membership. In 2021 she was employed by the German Soccer Affiliation as assistant coach of the feminine U15 crew. A yr later, she efficiently accomplished the Professional License course and has since been formally allowed to work as a head coach within the Bundesliga and 2nd League.
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