Eva Olid's Bold Approach as Manchester United Manager
Eva Olid doesn’t sound like a coach easing her way into England. She sounds like someone intent on tearing up a script.
On Friday night, the new Manchester United manager steps into the spotlight for her first Women's Super League game, away at London City Lionesses, and her message to the dressing room is brutally simple: be brave, be bold, and go for the throat.
“The club wanted to play attractive football and be brave,” she said. “We know that can have risks but the club support me in that. They signed me for that.”
A new face, a noisy doubt
Olid arrives from Hearts, replacing Marc Skinner after his summer departure, and she walks straight into a club wrestling with expectation. A quiet transfer window, far more restrained than many United supporters had demanded, has fuelled the narrative that a top-three finish might be slipping out of reach.
She has heard all of it. And she is not remotely surprised.
“It's normal, no? It's normal to have people doubting,” the Spaniard said. “I have felt the support a lot too. People that followed me in the last years with Hearts know I made something impossible possible, so I believe in what we are going to do.
“It's not something you get in weeks but I believe with a little time you get impossible things.”
That line is not a slogan. It is a challenge – to her players, to the league, and to those already writing United off.
Attack first, ask questions later
If there is a single thread running through Olid’s early days at Carrington, it is aggression with the ball. She has been crystal clear about what she wants to see when her team crosses the white line.
“My ambition is attacking football. I focus the gameplans on how we can hurt the teams. All teams have weaknesses we can exploit,” she said.
This is not tinkering at the edges of what United did last year. It is a shift in identity. She openly admits the style of play is “different to what we had last year” and that the transformation cannot be completed overnight.
Pre-season has not exactly crackled with fluency, and she knows it. The performances have been patchy, the adaptation uneven. But the opener at London City Lionesses comes too soon for perfection, so she has been ruthless about what to prioritise.
“You can imagine it's not an easy task,” she said. “What I did was put aside the principles of play that I thought was easier to change for the first match so we can compete.”
In other words: strip it back, keep the core of the new idea, and make sure United still look like United on day one.
Brave football, real risk
Olid is under no illusion about what her approach invites. An attacking mindset, high up the pitch, will leave space. It will lead to mistakes. It will test the resolve of a squad already under scrutiny.
But this is exactly why the club turned to her. United’s hierarchy wanted a side that plays on the front foot, that entertains as much as it competes. Olid has built her reputation on that kind of football, and she is not about to dial it down to ease the pressure.
“This team will play the first match in the league and I want it to be as close as possible to what I want,” she said.
The WSL can be unforgiving to idealists. On Friday night, under the London lights, we start to find out whether Eva Olid’s belief in the impossible can withstand its first real examination.
