City’s cash has created a football Disney Land
Quinn astounded at change from primitive past
FOR ALL the faux outrage at the manner in which the Manchester City team bus was welcomed to Anfield last week, it is worth remembering that there was a time when the club’s own supporters regularly hurled abuse at their underperforming players. Niall Quinn certainly does. It’s just shy of 30 years since he arrived from Arsenal a few months before Italia 90, but it may as well be a completely different age considering the slick makeover funded by Abu Dhabi oil money.
Before the £200 million Etihad Campus, with its cryotherapy chambers, ultra-sound rooms and mini hotel, there was Platt Lane, a training ground sandwiched among terraced houses in Fallowfield with the main pitch exposed alongside a busy road.
‘The only dodgy part about it was if you played terrible on the Saturday they could all come and see you at the fence. We didn’t have the brains in them days to put up something around the fence. They would gather and let you know what they thought of you,’ Quinn recalls.
The Irish social club St Kentigern’s was just around the corner, so too the city’s famous Curry Mile, but with its four completely contrasting stands, as if pieced together by a child playing with Lego, Maine Road was the epicentre of the community.
Despite yesterday’s derby setback, they are virtually the champions of England once more, a fifth title and third since 2012 beckons, and while some fans long for the old days, they certainly don’t yearn for the sense of dread and despair which infiltrated each weekend.
‘When I got there, we had a training kit with a loincloth that Tarzan wouldn’t have worn,’ Quinn laughs. ‘After every training session I would come in and have these blisters on my thighs from the shorts and you would have to wash the kit yourselves whenever the washing machine at the training ground was not working properly.’
Quinn was signed by Howard Kendall for £800,000 prior to the 1990 World Cup and his wages jumped from £300 to £1,000. But frugality reigned in other areas.
‘The tracksuits we wore were handed down to the reserves the second year. And they went to the youth team for the third year. This is where it was, and we are talking about the 1990s here, not the 1950s,’ the Dubliner adds.
‘You had two home jerseys, your short sleeve one and your long sleeve. And you had two away jerseys and they had to do you for the year. On the last day of the season, you were allowed to keep one.’
And rather than employ a crafty agent to suss out the lie of the land with regards a new contract or potential offer elsewhere, Quinn soon copped on to how the top brass conducted their business.
‘It sounds daft, it sounds like primitive stuff, but if you had a hole in your boots they were sent to the cobblers to be mended, that’s fine. But if they gave you a new pair, you felt great because that meant they were going to keep you for another season. It was so different to now. Back in the day, there was great camaraderie of course, and we would all got into a big communal bath after matches and there could have been anything in there,’ he recalls.
‘So compare all that to what they have built at the Etihad Campus since. It is just mind boggling. It is like going into Disney Land, a football version of excellence. What they have there is astounding – totally different to how it was.
‘I still meet people who go to games there – they sometimes hanker for the good old days. “Do you remember the Kippax, Niall?” It was the largest terrace in the country and if they accepted you, you knew you were going well.’
Quinn scored 22 times in his first full season and remained the last City player to net 20 top flight goals before Carlos Tevez arrived during the early stages of the Abu Dhabi revolution in 2010. He was one of the rare breed during their dominance in the 1990s to hit a brace in the Manchester derby.
‘No one remembers! Roy [Keane] got a late winner and broke our hearts,’ Quinn rues, the game ending 3-2 to United after City had led 2-0 at half-time. ‘I remember walking down the tunnel and all the United fans singing “Blue Moon/ you started singing too soon”. We were totally deflated.’
Perhaps the loss to United yesterday will provide the impetus required to pull off a stunning comeback against Liverpool on Tuesday night.
‘I feel they want world domination and Champions League has to be part of that. That is why Pep is there, to realise that ambition. They are set up to go close,’ Quinn said before the 3-0 first-leg defeat. ‘They are gearing up to it, they’re knocking on the door.’
The handle would have fallen off for the old City so we will see on Tuesday if things really are all that different.