Manchester United’s Spanish Evolution: Who Is Eva Olid? | OneFootball

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Analysis

Manchester United Women will begin a new era heading into 2026/27, with Eva Olid taking over from Marc Skinner as the team’s Head Coach.

To many she’s unknown. From the young girl from Sabadell, Catalonia, to the football philosophy which defines her today, who is Eva Olid?

Her Background

40 year old Eva Olid is from Sabadell, a town based in Catelonia.

Growing up, she became gradually more and more obsessed about football. From watching four or five games per weekend with her “football fanatic” dad to having a book that contained information about the Spanish league which she would study until she knew everything.

At the age of 7, she played football with boys before deciding at 10 years old that she wanted to play with girls. The women’s team she played for was Sabadell, whose first team were in the Spanish first division at the time.

Due to women’s football at the time not having the financing like men’s football, where players would have to pay for their own travel and club tracksuit, Olid had a choice to make after a few years of playing; Continue playing despite it costing money and time or go to university to study?

She chose the latter in order to become a teacher but her passion remained for football where she continued analysing matches every week!

coaching background

Olid began her coaching career at the age of 26, with Sant Quirze who were in the Spanish third division at the time.

In a Coaches’ Voice piece in 2025, she described it as a tough challenge due to her seriousness in wanting to become a professional football coach whereas the players were just there for fun. Despite the difficulty, she helped the team finish in their highest position in the league at the time.

However, she soon left for a new challenge after Sant Quirze had no ambitions of trying to reach the second division due to the travel costs and the extra money required.

Her new challenge was Sant Cugat, where she coached in their boys academy. This was seen as the third best academy in Catalonia behind Espanyol and FC Barcelona.

Olid found this experience valuable, due to the teachings being more technique focused rather than tactical focused. This would include work where players were taught how to scan by turning their head to scan around the pitch all the time which helped with basic decision making.

In women’s football, those basics weren’t as evident so after a few years with the academy, where the club even offered her opportunities with older age groups, Olid he decided to move on to another challenge because she wanted to fight for women’s football.

She returned to her hometown, Sabadell, where she coached the women’s academy team. It was very competitive in multiple age groups due to the club also competing with Espanyol and Barcelona.

She also had roles within Sabadell’s first team as well as becoming the club’s Head of Women’s Football where she was responsible for the first team and academy. Olid also coached a group of disability players.

Soon after returning, Olid received a phone call from an old university friend, whose husband was in the United States and knew an American team that was looking for a female coach.

She left her role at Sabadell to take on a professional coaching role at Houston Dynamo. Olid was offered the chance to go to the United States where she was able to coach at the club’s academy in Louisiana. Olid coached the men’s u19s team as well as one of the women’s teams.

Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, Olid was forced to leave her role at Houston Dynamo to avoid the risk of being away from her family for a long time.

After things gradually got better, she took on roles within the Catalan Football Association where she was doing methodology and co-ordinating all the teams that were part of the association.

Olid was also in contact with Fran Alonso, former Head Coach of Lewes Women and Celtic Women. She wanted to see how he worked when he was Head Coach of the respective clubs at different times, first Lewes then later on Celtic.

Alonso liked Olid’s football ideas and one day called her to let her know about a potential Head Coach position. Hearts were looking for a new Head Coach, and soon after sending over her CV and application as well as doing a presentation to the board with her methodology and ideas, Eva Olid became Hearts Women Head Coach.

Eva Olid’s Hearts: How did they play?

When Olid first arrived at Hearts, the players lacked basic understanding of football. During 2020/21, one year before Olid’s arrival, the club had finished bottom of the Scottish Women’s Premier League (SWPL) but weren’t relegated due to the pandemic.

Initially, Olid set out the goal in her first season for the team to survive which they were able to achieve. Gradually over the next couple of seasons, Olid pushed the club to invest a little bit more money so the team could build a better and stronger team.

By the 2024/25 season, after the basic foundations had been laid in the previous three seasons, Olid’s team began developing much clearer principles in how they wanted to play with more consistent executions being performed by players.

Hearts would often use the 3-4-2-1 as their starting shape. In possession, Eva Olid wants her team to invite the pressure from the opponent. This is done through short passing combinations in her team’s own half.

The wing-backs look to hold as much width as possible whilst the two no10s have freedom to drop deep to receive the ball in half-spaces.

The aim of inviting pressure into such a dangerous area is so that spaces open up in behind which can be exploited with vertical passes and well rehearsed movements.

It is also important players are comfortable playing with the ball in dangerous areas whilst under pressure. For example, the goalkeeper plays a key role by becoming a +1 in the build-up phase. But if that goalkeeper is not comfortable with the ball at their feet, the numerical advantage is not as effective.

In the examples below, Hearts begin their build-up phase against Hibernian before progressing towards the opponent’s half. Hearts use a 3-2 structure where the goalkeeper is the +1 that makes it a 4 and the aim is to invite the pressure before playing short passes into central areas.

Image credit: Scottish Gas Scottish cup

Image credit: Scottish Gas Scottish cup

In image two, you can see how the right wing-back looks to attack space beyond after the right no10 and striker have dropped deep to receive short into feet. At the end of the sequence, Hearts won a throw-in in the Hibernian half.

Eva Olid’s build-up structure is also quite flexible. Some teams may be fixated on using a 3-2 or 4-2 base, but with Olid she is inventive and flexible.

In the example below, Hearts use a diamond like shape in the first phase of build-up. This involves the two wide centre-backs in the back three being split, the central Centre-back being comfortable stepping up into midfield and the goalkeeper also being comfortable playing outside the penalty box.

Image credit: Heart of Midlothian

With the protection of a proactive goalkeeper, two wide centre-backs and a central centre-back acting as a holding midfielder in a potential rest defence, it allows the two no8s in the starting pivot to take up more advanced positions higher up the pitch where the central lane of attack can be overloaded.

If the central lane is overloaded with four or five players, it can force the opponent to defend more narrowly to cover off the central threat which in turn means that one of the wing-backs can be isolated out wide with plenty of space to attack if the ball is switched over.

Against most teams, these flexible possession ideas can feel almost unstoppable due to the amount of thinking and coaching that has repeatedly been put into it and with technical abilities in Scottish Women’s football generally being weak, the way Hearts played with the ball under Olid can be seen as an ‘anomaly’ since nobody else had these ideas.

However, there are ways where these ideas of ball progression can be disrupted. Against Rangers, Hearts struggled to find short passing combinations into space vertically as Rangers were not baited in easily to recklessly press high.

Often during the match, Rangers would first look to condense the spaces between-the-lines and be compact before potentially pressing high.

This was because they were aware that if Hearts had space to play into between-the-lines, they could be very dangerous with combinations and rehearsed movements. Without the spaces, Hearts were sometimes forced to go long which proved ineffective.

In the example below, you can see how this looked.

Image credit: Heart of Midlothian

Out of possession play is also key to how Eva Olid wants her team to play. Olid demands an aggressive player-to-player press which begins high into the opponent’s half. Whether it is from a throw-in or goal-kick, every player has to be prepared to squeeze onto their respective opponent to apply intensive pressure.

The aim of this is to force high turnovers which in turn can help produce high quality chances to score goals. It can also be seen as an exploitation of the weak technical abilities players in the Scottish league have in regards to build-up play.

In the examples below, Hearts are aiming to press player-to-player against Glasgow City. In image one, they use a 3-4-1-2 structure whilst in image two they are aiming to trap the opponent onto one side of the pitch.

Image credit: Heart of Midlothian

Image credit: Heart of Midlothian

Like the ideas with possession, Eva Olid’s defensive ideas are not exclusive to any set structure. Whilst against Glasgow City a 3-4-1-2 was used, against a different opponent a different structure was used.

In the example below, Hearts are defending in a 3-1-4-2 against Queen’s Park. The intentions are the exact same; Aggressive player-to-player pressing to force turnover of possession within the opponent’s half.

Image credit: Heart of Midlothian

Just like with the possession play, these ideas are incredibly effective against a majority of teams due to the technical inferiority in comparison to a top team that has been well coached and has rehearsed these ideas repeatedly with consistency.

But against opposition who are equally as strong, if not better, there are ways which can neutralise the effects of this method of defending.

In the example below, Rangers use one of their midfielders to drop into the backline to act as the +1 against Hearts’ front two.

Image credit: Heart of Midlothian

Not only does this restrict the way Hearts could press from the front, it also enabled Rangers to push their Right-back higher up the pitch which also meant they could pin Hearts’ left wing-back all the way back.

This enabled Rangers to gain total control of the ball as well as total control of how Hearts were positioned out of possession.

conclusion

Eva Olid’s journey from Sabadell all the way to her new job as Manchester United Women’s Head Coach is equally as fascinating as her philosophy and football ideas.

It will certainly be a fascination to see how she shapes up her Manchester United team.