00:00Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel, and unless you do not personally do internet, in which
00:08case, what are you doing here?
00:10You will have seen the news this week about Mary Louise Etter, and the fact she has become the first
00:16woman in history to take charge of a senior men's game in Europe's top five leagues.
00:24It's quite a big deal. And it's not just one, she's got five games, in fact, in which she needs
00:28to turn around the fortunes of Union Berlin, and as I'm sure you can imagine, a lot of people have
00:35a lot of thoughts, and a lot of people have a lot of opinions over the fact that she is,
00:41as you can see, a human woman.
00:44So why don't you and me have a little look at what is actually going on here? Like, who is
00:50she? How did she get here? Do the many men with anonymous social media profiles currently ripping the piss out
00:57of the situation actually have a point? There is much to discuss, mein Freunde.
01:05Okay, so the background you need for this is that this is Union Berlin, in case you were wondering, and
01:12yes, that is Oliver Burke, but no, that isn't Sami Khadira, although it is his brother, and they are all
01:19collectively in a bit of trouble this season.
01:22After they had a decent enough start to the season, they're now in Bundesliga freefall, as they've only got two
01:28wins in the last 14 games, and yes, you're right, that is only one more win in the same amount
01:35of time than Tottenham, just so you can gauge the full badness of that.
01:40They were beaten by bottom of the table Heidenheim at the weekend, and naturally binned off manager Stefan Baumgart as
01:46a result.
01:47Now, I have seen, as I'm sure you have, some people saying that this is purely some sort of PR
01:53stunt, because they're 11 points away from relegation, so nothing can really go wrong.
01:59It's actually quite a safe thing to do, but that is, my friends, a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Bundesliga
02:07works.
02:08While it is only the bottom two that get relegated automatically, the third top and third bottom teams from both
02:15divisions then have a two-legged playoff to see who goes up and who goes down.
02:20Which, of course, means that in reality, their buffer to safety is only seven points.
02:26They've got two of the chasing packs, starting with Wolfsburg coming right up.
02:30They also go away to Leipzig and have Mainz and Augsburg who won't be feeling safe either, so I can
02:37absolutely assure you this is a precarious situation that needs to be navigated by someone who knows what they're doing.
02:46And so, with their league position on one hand and a managerial vacancy on the other, they have taken the
02:51insane, shocking, radical, scarcely believable decision of appointing someone already at the club who's run the youth team and was
03:02at one point the literal assistant manager.
03:05Which, in itself, was also quite a big deal at the time, because she was also the first woman in
03:11a top league to get that job as well.
03:14She was Marco Grotz number two for the majority of the 23-24 season until he left, and she spent
03:21all of this season running the men's under-19s, where she has not lost a single game.
03:27And don't get me wrong here, right, it's not the top youth league in Germany, they're not in there with
03:32Bayern or anybody like that, but they've played 14 games, they've won 12 of them and scored 44 goals.
03:39And any club that had somebody on their books doing that would understandably rate them as a coach very highly,
03:47if only internally.
03:48But I do not think it's the success of the youth team that's put her in this position of trust.
03:53I think that's more about her stint as assistant manager, and a lot of people seem to have missed what
03:59actually happened there.
04:00Back in 2024, the then-manager Njennad Bielica went and smashed Leroy Sane in the Moy for reasons I cannot
04:08be bothered to go and look up.
04:10Now, quite predictably, he got a three-game touchline ban for that, but even back then, Union were also flirting
04:17with the idea of relegation, having gone on a nine-game run of defeats.
04:23And you know how it works when a manager gets a touchline ban, he has to hand off control of
04:29the games themselves to his team of assistants, and in this case, specifically, Mary Louise Etter.
04:35And first up was the crucial relegation six-pointer against Darmstadt, which they won 1-0 thanks to this lovely
04:42breakaway goal from Hollaback,
04:45but also managed to miss a number of other chances created again by lovely breakaway moves.
04:50Then after that, they played Leipzig, who were very good that season, and they lost after going down to ten
04:56men, but they then ground out quite a respectable draw away to Mainz.
05:00Or, to put that another way, she got them four points in the three games she was in charge for,
05:07and at the end of that season, Union Berlin stayed in the Bundesliga purely on goal difference.
05:14Now, the thing is, right, that does not mean she's some sort of generational talent.
05:20It doesn't mean she somehow single-handedly saved the club from relegation, but what it does mean is that she
05:27can do her job, and she can do it very well when the pressure's on.
05:32And this is a very small thing here, right, but if you think I sat through the full 90 minutes
05:38of Union versus Darmstadt not to show you a single clip, right, you're very much mistaken.
05:44So this bit here, it's late in the game, right, they're holding onto the lead, and Etter makes the decision
05:49to take off the goal scorer Hollaback and instead replace him with Brendan Aronson.
05:54The difference being that he was going to sit in this sort of pocket between the midfield and the defence,
05:59rather than being a two up top, so that the remaining centre-forward would occupy both the opposition centre-backs.
06:05And his very first contribution after coming on nearly gets them a goal that would put the game out of
06:10reach, because Bieren, as you can see, is occupying both the defenders now, and Aronson is deeper and in that
06:17pocket.
06:17So he's able to run unmarked from that space, with the defenders tied up, into the gap Darmstadt have left
06:24by pushing up.
06:27And I know I do exactly what you're thinking, what a slick line-up graphic you've got there, Adam, that
06:31can't possibly be FopMob, because the app doesn't have that functionality.
06:34Well, it does now, so if you haven't already downloaded the app, the link is in the description.
06:38We love them, we hang out with them, they do stuff with us, and I literally have it on my
06:43mobile telephone, and you can too, from the bit down there.
06:47Scores, results, fixtures, heatmaps now, team builders, it's very good.
06:53And, again, that is not mind-blowing stuff, this is not me hyping her up.
06:59Like, even a suspended manager will be in training during the week, working on these kind of things, and the
07:05entire rest of the coaching staff were in the dugout with her.
07:09But what it is, is an example of the exact sort of competency people are questioning with this appointment, and
07:18that just seems mad to me.
07:21Like, one thing you somehow still hear about female pundits is that their background is not right to talk about
07:27the men's game.
07:28And Marie-Louisetta is a Champions League winner in her playing career, but she didn't even feature in the final.
07:35She was never capped at senior level by Germany.
07:38So no matter what parallels you choose to draw between the men's and women's game, I'm sure she would be
07:44the first to tell you she never really played it at the highest level.
07:49But if you just look up and down the technical areas of football's biggest clubs, you cannot move for people
07:54now who have proven standards of excellence at the very, very top, despite never kicking a ball to that same
08:02standard.
08:03Like, take Pep Linders, who has been instrumental in the dugout for both Liverpool and now Manchester City, right?
08:10He played youth football for a local amateur side called Sveb Bruyken... Bruyken... Bruyken?
08:19I don't even know if that's the right way of saying it, but that was it.
08:22Albert Steibenberg, Michael Arteta's number two at Arsenal.
08:26He retired at 19 years old, having failed to graduate from Feyenoord's youth system.
08:32And Jason Tindall, he's literally just somebody Eddie Howe met on a stag do in Falaraki,
08:38who's been following him around for 20 years, such is my understanding.
08:42So I just, I would like to think we're in a place now where people recognise that you don't necessarily
08:48need to have played football at a certain level to be able to coach at it as well.
08:53They're clearly two very separate things.
08:56And again, I do feel the need to stress this.
08:58This is not me saying, she's going to be a guaranteed success, they're going to do brilliantly, they should give
09:03her the job permanently.
09:04I've got no idea how this is going to go.
09:06All I know is that she is definitely qualified to do this.
09:10The only remarkable thing about it is that it's a first.
09:13She hasn't won this in a raffle.
09:15She knows the club, she knows the players, she knows the culture.
09:19She is part of the ecosystem there.
09:21And in every single capacity they've ever given her an opportunity at Union Berlin, she's done a good job.
09:29And that is, at 34 years old, exactly how you're supposed to earn opportunities like this one.
09:36And I just, I really wanted, right, just to keep this video purely factual and not get, like, drawn down
09:43the same avenue as, like, the club's Twitter account where they've been replying to people saying stuff like,
09:48Like, yeah, but you never fucked anyone, did you, Pat?
09:52I didn't want to do that.
09:53But I have seen some people saying stuff like, well, how can you expect her, a woman, to control a
10:00room or a club or a team or whatever that's full of men?
10:03Right? And I haven't got any science for this.
10:09But what I would say is, have you, have you met women?
10:17Have you, have you ever met women?
10:19Because I think she'll be fine.
10:22And yes, that is how I'm choosing to end the video.
10:25Thanks very much for asking.
10:26You can let us know what you think of this in the comments down below.
10:29In a sane way, thank you very much.
10:31And you can subscribe to the Adam Cleary Football Channel, wherever that button is.
10:35You can get me across all the social medias at AdamCleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
10:38And thanks, as ever, to our generous pals and sponsors and buddies at FocMob.
10:42You can download their app from the link in the description.
10:44For all your uni on Berlin news, or indeed, literally every other club in the world, the app is that
10:49good.
10:49There's a man at the door now, so I'm going to have to go.
10:52Goodbye.
10:57Look, there he is.
10:58That's Ama. Everyone say boo.
11:02I'll walk in there.
11:03I'll walk in there.
Comments