Popular coach who believed in the women’s game when few did and cared for his players like they were his daughters
On a tour around Liverpool’s revamped women’s training site at Melwood in 2024, of all the grand improvements to the building that Matt Beard could have pointed out with pride, one specific addition meant more to him than any other. It was a painting of his late father, done by a close friend, attached to the wall in his corner office, and his affection for that gift summed up his deep love for family, which is just one reason why the thoughts of so many people in the women’s football community turned immediately to his wife, children and all of his loved ones, after the shock news of his death at the age of just 47.
The Beard family’s loss is being felt all across the sport on a deeply sad weekend for the women’s game, as he is remembered for both his ability to make people laugh and his ability to win football matches. Straight-talking in press conferences, but then charming off the microphone, he made time for fans, for fundraising events and for the pub. Some saw him as the “Del Boy of women’s football”, good at finding a bargain in the transfer market and fiercely proud of his London roots, but as a coach he was certainly no plonker – his achievements as a manager make him not just the most successful women’s-team coach in Liverpool’s history but also undoubtably one of the best of the Women’s Super League era. Even before the division was founded in 2011, he was already a key figure in the development of the women’s game and he fiercely championed its growth long before it entered the mainstream.
His Liverpool side securing back-to-back WSL titles in 2013 and 2014 stamped his name into the history books for certain, but he had already led Chelsea to their first FA Cup final in 2012, and even before that, he had guided Millwall Lionesses to promotion in 2009. He had a spell in the United States coaches Boston Breakers – and would later joke about nobody there being able to understand his cockney accent – before taking another club to their first FA Cup final in 2019, this time as the manager of West Ham.
Continue reading…Popular coach who believed in the women’s game when few did and cared for his players like they were his daughtersOn a tour around Liverpool’s revamped women’s training site at Melwood in 2024, of all the grand improvements to the building that Matt Beard could have pointed out with pride, one specific addition meant more to him than any other. It was a painting of his late father, done by a close friend, attached to the wall in his corner office, and his affection for that gift summed up his deep love for family, which is just one reason why the thoughts of so many people in the women’s football community turned immediately to his wife, children and all of his loved ones, after the shock news of his death at the age of just 47.
The Beard family’s loss is being felt all across the sport on a deeply sad weekend for the women’s game, as he is remembered for both his ability to make people laugh and his ability to win football matches. Straight-talking in press conferences, but then charming off the microphone, he made time for fans, for fundraising events and for the pub. Some saw him as the “Del Boy of women’s football”, good at finding a bargain in the transfer market and fiercely proud of his London roots, but as a coach he was certainly no plonker – his achievements as a manager make him not just the most successful women’s-team coach in Liverpool’s history but also undoubtably one of the best of the Women’s Super League era. Even before the division was founded in 2011, he was already a key figure in the development of the women’s game and he fiercely championed its growth long before it entered the mainstream.His Liverpool side securing back-to-back WSL titles in 2013 and 2014 stamped his name into the history books for certain, but he had already led Chelsea to their first FA Cup final in 2012, and even before that, he had guided Millwall Lionesses to promotion in 2009. He had a spell in the United States coaches Boston Breakers – and would later joke about nobody there being able to understand his cockney accent – before taking another club to their first FA Cup final in 2019, this time as the manager of West Ham. Continue reading…