Union Berlin claimed their first win since March, dispatching Mainz 3-1 on Sunday to halt a winless run that had stretched across five league matches. The victory arrived under interim head coach Marie-Louise Eta, who made history by becoming the first female head coach to win a game in any of European soccer's top five men's leagues.
Eta, who took over after Steffen Baumgart was fired last month, had managed one draw and two losses before Sunday's result. She let out a muted celebration—punching the air and joining her players in applauding the Union fans—before speaking to broadcaster DAZN. "You're happy, you want to win games," she said. "That's always the case and so it was today as well. The way it happened was great too, how we managed to pull it off."
The matchup already has enough history; the job is to keep the reading list shorter than the tension.
The match itself was interrupted in the first half when Union supporters flung tennis balls onto the pitch in protest at league scheduling—a visual reminder that even landmark wins come wrapped in the usual club friction. Mainz, now coached by former Union boss Urs Fischer, remains 10th in the table.
Eta's time in charge of the men's team concludes next week when Union hosts Augsburg in their season finale. She has already agreed to take over the women's side for the next campaign.
What the win changes
Beyond the three points, the victory offers Union something harder to quantify: a clean ending to an awkward chapter. Eta's appointment was always temporary, and she handled the "social impact" of her historic role by treating it as secondary to results. That discipline—getting points first, explaining later—earned her this win, and now she leaves with the club's first victory in two months rather than a drawn-out farewell. The women's team role awaits, but this week belongs to the men.