Michael "Micky" Quinn, (born May 2 1962 in Everton, Liverpool), is a retired English footballer. He played as a centre-forward for the vast majority of his career. However, despite being a consistent goalscorer, he was more notorious for his large build.
Following his retirement from football in 1996, Quinn has become a professional racehorse trainer and now has stables at Newmarket in Suffolk. He also covers horse racing and football for the radio station TalkSPORT.
Quinn was the first of four children born to Michael and Patricia Quinn. He was born in the Everton area of Liverpool, but in 1967 the family was rehoused to a new council house on Cantril Farm.
Quinn began his career as an apprentice with Derby County on leaving school in 1978, but left after just one season and turned professional on joining Wigan Athletic in September 1979. Shortly afterwards he came to the attention of Social Security after being reported for claiming unemployment benefit while being employed full-time by Wigan Athletic. He had decided to continue signing on and claiming unemployment benefit to help his family, but quickly withdrew his claim and arranged to pay back the money in instalments.
His first child, Michael Quinn, was born four months later.
After helping Wigan gain promotion to the Third Division in 1982, he was transferred to Stockport County, where he established himself as a regular goalscorer before joining Second Division Oldham Athletic in January 1984.
Quinn joined Portsmouth in March 1986 but they just missed out on promotion to the First Division. In April 1986, he was found guilty of drink-driving and received a £100 fine as well as a one-year driving ban. He breached the driving ban twice later that year, and on 19 January 1987 was sentenced to 21 days in prison, but was freed after serving 14 days.
Despite this, he was Portsmouth's top goalscorer with 24 goals in all competitions as they finished Second Division runners-up and reclaimed the First Division place that they had last held in the late 1950s. However, Portsmouth were relegated back to the Second Division after one season. Quinn stayed at Fratton Park for the 1988-89 season and scored 20 league goals, but Portsmouth finished 20th in the league and their good early season form was perhaps all that saved them from a second successive relegation. Halfway through the season, manager Alan Ball had left to be succeeded by John Gregory, and this transition was largely blamed for Portsmouth's slump in form.
Newcastle United manager Jim Smith paid £680,000 for Quinn in July 1989, just after their relegation to the Second Division. He scored four goals on his debut in a 5-2 home win over Leeds United on 19 August and finished as the Football League's top goalscorer in 1989-90 with 34 league goals. He managed 39 in all competitions. Newcastle were beaten to the automatic promotion places by Leeds and Sheffield United, and their promotion hopes were ended when they lost to Sunderland in the playoffs. During his first six months at Highfield Road, Quinn scored 17 Premiership goals - 10 of them in his first 6 games. His performances were not enough to bring Coventry City beyond 15th place in the final table (although they had occupied fourth place at one stage), but they improved to 11th place the following season with Quinn still scoring regularly, starting the 1993-94 season with a hat-trick against Arsenal in a 3-0 away win. Quinn featured regularly for Coventry during the 1993-94 season, still scoring goals on a regular basis, but in September 1994 Coventry signed Dion Dublin and Quinn lost his place in the team. He had unproductive loan spells with Plymouth Argyle (in November 1994) and Watford (in March 1995) before new manager Ron Atkinson gave him a free transfer on 1 May 1995.
Quinn appeared on BBC TV's Football Focus as part of their 'Cult Heroes' series in 2005, inspired by his relatively prolific two seasons as Highfield Road. Whilst at Coventry, he was nicknamed 'Sumo' and was famously quoted as being the Premiership's 'fastest player over a yard'. Quinn was also seriously considered for inclusion into the England football squad during 1993.
On leaving Coventry, Quinn had a brief spell playing in Greece with PAOK Thessaloniki FC. Around this time, his youngest brother Sean (a former apprentice footballer with Liverpool and later Portsmouth) died suddenly at the age of 26. Shortly afterwards, his mother Patricia died of cancer aged 52.
Quinn applied for the manager's job at Burnley in 1996, but it went to Adrian Heath instead, and he decided to retire from football and concentrate on his career as a racehorse trainer.
In August 2001, he was suspended from racehorse training for two-and-a-half years after the RSPCA found that three horses in his care were being neglected. His ban from the sport was later reduced to one year on appeal.
In 2003 he released his autobiography Who Ate All The Pies?.
In 2005 he signed a contract with the newspaper Cambridge Evening News, where he had his own column entitled Who Ate All The Pies?. Here he comments on various aspects of football, sport and the world.
He appeared on the 2006 series of Celebrity Fit Club, weighing more than 18 stone and finished the programme as Mr Fit Club, having lost 24% of his initial body weight and now feeling refreshed. This later led Harvey Walden, the US Marine instructor, on the series comparing him to The Incredible Hulk. He has most recently been seen on May 14 2006 playing for Italy in the Celebrity World Cup Soccer Six tournament in Birmingham, UK.
Quinn was the co-host of Drive Time on Talksport with Adrian Durham until recently when he was replaced by Ian Wright.
While at Portsmouth the fans' chant for him was, "He's fat, he's round, he's worth a million pound - Micky Quinn!"