Marie-Louise Eta: “We made a good step in the right direction”

Marie-Louise Eta: “We made a good step in the right direction”

Marie-Louise Eta believes Union Berlin already took a huge step in her debut game as a Bundesliga coach. The trailblazer was Bundesliga’s guest for the latest edition of “Midweek Interviews”.

“In my opinion, we made a good step in the right direction on Saturday,” Eta said in reference to the narrow defeat to Wolfsburg. “The lads wanted to implement the plan. In the end, a lot of things worked very well.

“You just can’t expect everything to work immediately in such a short space of time, but I saw a lot of good things in the game, both on and off the ball. Ultimately, it was just the fine margins lacking for us to not get a better result.”

Eta looks forward to the remaining four games as she expects improved results if they keep improving. “We analysed the game well afterwards, and we will work on improving some aspects. We also highlighted the aspects that were positive. If we keep putting in performances like that, then the results will change in the end.”

The 34-year-old coach also explained her routines in the first few days at her new job. “There were a lot of tasks to do. If you are new to a team, the first thing is to come together as a coaching team and bring in your own ideas.

“I could sense the positive energy and the belief in the players. Of course, due to the last weeks and months, the players lacked self-confidence. But they were very open and eager to take on

feedback. We offered solutions about how we wanted to approach the game, and you could already see this in the game.”

Although Eta was pleased with the performance, she didn’t hide from the disappointing outcome against an out-of-form team. “They implemented a lot of the ideas very well, despite the result not going our way. We were all very disappointed with that, but it was a good step in the right direction. It’s now about building on that in our preparation for the next game, and approaching it with full confidence.”