City star Jen shows sporting glory runs in the Beattie family
PEP GUARDIOLA is in the City Football Academy canteen giving a speech to dozens of office staff, thanking them for their contributions during the season. He is talking about the club’s community spirit, togetherness and linearity.
Jen Beattie, star of Manchester City Women, is about 30 yards away conveying her own salient message when applause can be heard from Guardiola’s address. Given the content, there feels a degree of symmetry to it all.
‘It’s not the men play like this, women this and academy this,’ she says while pressing a hand on the desk to emphasise the point. ‘It’s all structured in one playing technique.’
Nick Cushing, manager of a City Women’s side who face Lyon in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final today, made that clear to Beattie when she signed three years ago.
‘I’ll never forget that, showing me videos of all the teams across the board of how we play out from the back,’ she says. ‘I love that, the technical work, and want to play that way.’
The statistics bear out the theory that all City teams are aligned. Nobody has completed more passes than Beattie, a Scottish central defender, in the Women’s Super League this season. The count after last weekend was 742 in 12 appearances. Four of the top five are City players. It can be no coincidence that Beattie’s numbers are so high during a year when Nicolas Otamendi, also a central defender, has broken the Premier League record.
‘You pinch yourself every day, being treated so equally to the guys,’ Beattie adds. ‘Those small margins help. We all count ourselves very lucky. We all eat together, it’s all communal tables and then you’re off on your own pitch.
‘The men are so supportive of us. We don’t see them every day By Jack Gaughan but you can have a conversation if you want.’
Perhaps that dynamic will flip should City’s women reach the Champions League final. Lyon have reached the past six finals, winning four, and are possibly the most technically gifted side in the world. The champions edged out City 3-2 on aggregate at this stage last year.
For Beattie — who played boys’ football for Hamilton Academical until she was 14 — next week’s second leg represents a return to France. After leaving Arsenal she was at Montpellier for a year in 2013 and had a familiar housemate. Brother Johnnie, capped 38 times by Scotland at rugby, had just switched from Glasgow Warriors.
‘It was surreal but cool to think I was playing professional football and he was playing professional rugby in the same city in France,’ she says.
‘It was a no-brainer and probably the most time I’ve ever spent with him because of our schedules. He’d just got married and I stayed with them for six months. Just training and then the beach. Only one player spoke English. It was the most out of my depth I’ve ever been and I definitely grew up going there.’
On the surface theirs looks a sporty family. Dad John is a broadcaster who was a Scotland rugby international himself and would later interview Will Smith as the star was cast in the 2015 film
Concussion after becoming fascinated by the neuroscientific effects of rugby.
Beattie Snr was born in North Borneo and family holidays included going back to Malaysia. They all followed him to the 1995 World Cup in South Africa, where he was broadcasting.
‘If you walked into our house growing up you wouldn’t know it was a sporting one,’ says Jen, 26. ‘It wasn’t all rugby or football chat.’
She added: ‘Montpellier was a really amazing experience.’ Seemingly topped, however, by a short loan spell at Melbourne City, who are owned by the same company who own City, during the off season.
‘Unbelievable,’ Beattie smiles. ‘The pitches were the same, the sessions the same and the system we played the same. We won every game.’