Niall Quinn
Striker · Sunderland · Republic of Ireland
About Niall Quinn
Niall Quinn is the towering Dublin-born striker who scored 141 league goals for Arsenal, Manchester City and Sunderland, and retired in 2002 as the Republic of Ireland's record goalscorer. He later returned to Sunderland as chairman from 2006 to 2011.
Niall Quinn's story
A Dublin Childhood, Two Sports
Born in Perrystown, Dublin, on 6 October 1966 and raised in nearby Crumlin, Quinn played Gaelic football and underage hurling for Dublin before choosing soccer. He signed for Arsenal at 16 in 1983.
Highbury to Maine Road
He won the League Cup with Arsenal in 1987, then joined Manchester City for £800,000 in 1990. In his first season he went in goal after Tony Coton was sent off against Derby County and saved Dean Saunders' penalty in a 2-1 win. City fans voted him Player of the Year.
Ireland's Record Scorer
Quinn won 92 caps between 1986 and 2002. His equaliser against the Netherlands sent Jack Charlton's side into the knockout rounds of Italia '90, Ireland's first World Cup, where they reached the quarter-finals. A cruciate ligament injury cost him USA '94, but he broke Frank Stapleton's scoring record on his 35th birthday against Cyprus and finished with 21 goals. Robbie Keane passed that record in 2004.
Sunderland, On and Off the Pitch
A 1996 move to Sunderland brought the First Division title in 1998-99, when he and Kevin Phillips scored 43 goals between them. He retired in 2002 with 475 league games and 141 goals, then returned as chairman in 2006, briefly managing the side himself before handing over to Roy Keane.
Giving It All Away
His May 2002 testimonial against Ireland raised £1m, and he kept none of it: £450,000 went to Crumlin children's hospital in Dublin, £450,000 to Sunderland Royal Hospital and the rest to GOAL's work with street children in Calcutta. An honorary MBE followed in 2003.
Life After Playing
He joined Sky Sports as a co-commentator in 2012, often alongside Martin Tyler, and served as the Football Association of Ireland's unpaid interim deputy chief executive in 2020.
Did you know?
- ✍️ As a boy he asked Kerry Gaelic football great Mick O'Dwyer for an autograph. O'Dwyer, a mechanic, wheeled out from under a car and washed his hands before signing, and Quinn says he could never refuse a fan's autograph after that.
- 🎵 'Niall Quinn's Disco Pants', a terrace song born on a Manchester City pre-season tour of Italy in 1992, was released as a single by Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme and reached No. 56 in the UK charts in April 1999.
- 👨👩👧👦 He has been married to Gillian Roe since 1992. The couple have two children, Michael and Aisling, and live in County Kildare.
- 🏥 The children's outpatient centre at Sunderland Royal Hospital, part-funded by his testimonial, opened in August 2004 and bears his name.
- 🎓 He completed a master's degree in history in 2022, writing his thesis on Irish revolutionary and FAI figure Oscar Traynor.
- 📚 His 2002 autobiography, written with journalist Tom Humphries, won Best Autobiography at the first British Sports Book Awards.
- 🛰️ In 2011 he launched Qsat, a satellite broadband company aimed at rural Irish homes. He left Sky Sports in 2017 to concentrate on it, and it closed later that year.
- 🏇 A keen golfer and horse racing fan, he has attended the Cheltenham Festival for 24 consecutive years.
- ⚽ Aged 50, he turned out for Straffan AFC's over-35s in August 2017 and scored in a penalty shoot-out to win a league shield semi-final.
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