Matt Beard: Ex-Liverpool manager ‘made you feel like best player in the world’

A minute’s silence took place in tribute to Beard before kick-off in all WSL and WSL2 games on Sunday.

Further tributes have been planned by Liverpool before their men’s side play Southampton in the Carabao Cup third round at Anfield on Tuesday.

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.”