Quinn: I don’t envy today’s boy millionaires

Niall Quinn has revealed he has no regrets about hanging up his boots in the days just before footballer’s wages rocketed.

The 46-year-old said he wouldn’t trade his Jack Charlton glory days for the huge pay packets and intense scrutiny surrounding today’s players.

And the Dublin entrepreneur — who is now fronting the broadband company Q-Sat — admitted on the Ray D’Arcy Show yesterday that there is still no love lost between himself and Roy Keane.

He said their relationship was purely businesslike after they settled their differences when he hired his former teammate to be the manager at Sunderland Football Club.

“It was for professional reasons, of course. We made up very quickly, near enough. There wasn’t exactly man hugs. There was an understanding we had a past and we must move on.”

When the footballer was directly asked if he liked the Manchester United legend by Ray D’Arcy he firmly replied: “No definitely not.

“Let’s steady on a bit. There was a trust in the air for the time we were (in Sunderland). I wouldn’t stay in touch with him and by the way the feeling would be entirely mutual.”

The player revealed he was paid just £200 a week when he was playing for Arsenal in the late 1980s

He said on the Today FM Show: “I was in the first team in Arsenal. I was earning 200 quid a week. I would get a £200 crowd bonus if there was more than 30,000. There happened to be 29,000 every week.”

But he said he “definitely” doesn’t envy the lifestyle or the millions earned by players in today’s game.

He said: “The fun I had and being part of the whole Jack Charlton era and being part of a young Arsenal team that grew into a great team and I had a wonderful time at Man City.

“I like to think I got the balance right, sometimes people might say I overdid the fun. I wanted to do it for reasons other than money and lifestyle, it was more about enjoying myself and doing it to share and getting out and having nights out.”

But he said his marriage to his model wife Gillian and a cruciate injury which threatened to end his career in 1993 helped him grow up.

“We are over 20 years married now but the first few years were definitely the hardest. I was 25 when I got married and I was too young to understand what marriage was all about. For one moment, and Gillian would agree with me, it wasn’t a lovely model footballer marriage that looks great in the papers. Behind closed door it was tough, I was still a kid. Gillian was the sensible one. I still thought life was about nothing but fun.

“Then suddenly Gillian was carrying a big bump around and I got in injured. Me doing my cruciate brought everything into stark contrast. That was probably the moment when I began to wise up.”