When Marie-Louise Eta takes her seat in the away dugout at Braga on Wednesday night women across the world will have reason to cheer long and loud. In her capacity as interim joint assistant manager at Union Berlin, Eta is set to become the first senior female coach to be actively involved in a men’s Champions League group stage game.
There was a time, not so long ago, when such a scenario seemed impossible. Indeed the inherent challenges involved dictate that Eta’s achievement still feels almost akin to a human walking on the moon. At elite levels of the men’s game gender diversity often remains a vague aspiration rather than anything approaching reality, so quite a watershed was achieved when, on Saturday, Eta helped choreograph Union Berlin to a 1-1 home draw with Augsburg. In the process she became the first female assistant manager in Bundesliga history.
