A New Challenge in the Summer:
Ailien Poese to Become Head Coach of the Academy's Junior Women's Teams
Ailien Poese's time as head coach of the women's first team at 1. FC Union Berlin will come to an end at the cumination of the current season. The 41-year-old coach has decided against extending her contract in the professional department and is returning to the club's youth section. There, she will be responsible for the development of young female footballers at 1. FC Union Berlin in the youth training centre for women and girls, which has been certified by the DFB since the beginning of the year.
Ailien Poese played for Union from 1998 to 2010. Since 2006, she has coached various girls' teams and was head of the women's and girls' department from 2008 to 2013. After stints with the Berlin Football Association and the German Football Association, she returned in 2022 and has since been coaching the first women's team, which has been professional since the 2023/24 season. Promotion to the 2. Bundesliga in the summer of 2024 was followed a year later by the championship title, and with it promotion to the Bundesliga. From the new season onwards, Poese will serve as head coach of the junior women's team at Union's youth academy.
"In recent years, Ailien Poese has played a key role in transforming women's football at Union from amateur to professional level and has led our team from the Regionalliga to the Bundesliga. I understand her personal decision to return to youth training and am all the more delighted that she will remain with 1. FC Union Berlin. I am sure that we will continue to work closely together after the Bundesliga season, which we want to finish successfully together,” said Jennifer Zietz, Union's director of women's professional football.
Poese said, “I look back on the last few years with gratitude and pride. Union have made incredible progress in this area in a very short time. We have all overcome many challenges together, learned and grown, both as a team and personally. I made a conscious decision to make a change for myself this summer and to use this experience to work with my colleagues in the youth department to gradually develop the training of and the structures for young talent. Right now, however, the priority is to successfully compete in our debut season in the top flight and to earn as many points as possible together.”
“In Ailien Poese, our youth academy is gaining an experienced coach who, after working in our club's women's youth department, the Berlin Football Association and the DFB, now also has first-hand experience of professional football. This is an ideal combination to open up the prospect of professional football for our young players. I am very much looking forward to continuing to work with her," explained Lutz Munack, Union's director of youth and amateur football.
