'Beard made you feel like best player in the world'

Matt Beard "made you feel like the best football player in the world" according to ex-Liverpool forward Natasha Dowie as she reflected on the impact her former manager had on her career.

Few players knew Beard, who died on Saturday aged 47, better than Dowie.

The former England striker played for Beard on four separate occasions, following him from Charlton Athletic to Liverpool and Boston Breakers, before eventually ending back together with the Reds again in a loan spell before she called time on her career in September 2023.

"I got a loan spell back at Liverpool which I never dreamed would be possible again -to come back to the club that I loved at the age of 34, but Beardy made that happen," Dowie told the Women's Football Weekly podcast.

"He knew me as a person, he knew I would run through a brick wall for him and I would. I would do anything for him because he was the type of manager that made you feel like that."

Dowie was part of Beard's Liverpool team that won back-to-back Women's Super League titles in 2013 and 2014, ending Arsenal's nine-year dominance in the women's game.

She said those two years "were the best time of my life" and anyone who had played under Beard "would say he was one of the best managers to ever work with".

Dowie will remember him as a trailblazer who "always did it for the love of the game".

"It wasn't long ago, three years ago, when I was playing at Liverpool that Beardy was watering the pitches at Tranmere," added the 37-year-old.

"That's what I loved about him. He never changed, he never tried to fit in with the way the game was going and try to be a different person. People called him old-school. He wasn't, he was just Beardy.

"I will miss him, I will miss his laugh, I will miss his hug, his big cheeky smile but we will make sure he's not forgotten."

A minute's silence took place before kick-off in all Sunday's WSL and WSL2 games.

Further tributes were held before Liverpool's men's side played Southampton in the Carabao Cup third round at Anfield on Tuesday, and at Burnley, where Beard had most recently managed.

Former Germany international Julia Simic, who played under Beard at West Ham and is now a youth team coach at Eintracht Frankfurt, wants to use what she learned from Beard in her own methods.

"Matt's strongest arm was the player management," Simic told Women's Football Weekly. "The care he showed everyone. There are different ways to be a good manager, you can be tactically very strong, you can do the best training sessions but you can also create the best environment."

Simic, 36, recalled her time under Beard fondly, in particular when they reached the Women's FA Cup final together in 2019.

"I remember he sat in front of us as a brand new team and he said he wanted us to reach the FA Cup final," she said.

"In the end we made it to Wembley and played against Manchester City as a complete underdog. We lost the final and after I spoke to him and I said, 'Matt, why didn't we win?' and he said, 'I made a mistake because I said we wanted to make it to the final, but I didn't say we wanted to win the final'.

"With us being at the final, the journey was done or the target was reached. He was always so hard with himself in terms of wanting to get everything out of us and himself.

"He stood in front us and said, 'that's on me, I'm sorry, my mistake'. Before I always had experienced coaches that would always find excuses or explanations."

Beard guided Liverpool to back-to-back Women's Super League titles in 2013 and 2014