Aston Villa captain John McGinn has become one of their most reliable players and a major reason for their rise under Unai Emery.
The hard-working Scottish midfielder played a key role in helping them secure a top-4 finish in the Premier League last season, with 10 goal contributions (six goals, four assists) in 35 appearances.
McGinn actually comes from a football fanatic family and one with deep roots to Scottish football. His grandfather, Jack, was once a chairman of Celtic FC and the Scottish Football Association president.
McGinn’s two brothers (Stephen and Paul) have both had footballing career, but he also has a sister in Katie.
Unlike her three brothers, the 30-year-old Katie has chosen for a non-footballing career. She is John McGinn’s twin as the two were born on the same day on 18 October, 1994.
Of course, they aren’t identical twins, but share a strong bond because of their similarity in age and how they grew up together as the fourth-borns of parents Stephen and Mary McGinn.
Katie attended the St. Stephens Primary School in Glasgow and John has revealed that Katie was a promising netball player. He had stated in an interview with the BBC: “My sister Katie used to be good at netball, and my mum also used to play. I used to go watch them at St Stephen’s. If someone asked who I was watching, I’d say ‘my mum is in goals, Katie is goal defence, my girlfriend [now fiancee] is wing defence, my cousin is centre.”
Even though Katie had no plans on pursuing a footballing career unlike her three brothers, she did everything possible to help John excel.
The Aston Villa skipper has revealed how she helped do some of his homework for him while reflecting on their school days, telling the Daily Mail: “My twin sister, Katie, was in the class. She was mortified. She had a smaller group of pals but they were more mature than me and my friends. That’s a strange dynamic as well, when your twin sister’s in the class. She was brilliant. When I was training with the St Mirren youth teams, she’d sometimes do my homework for me.”
Katie was definitely the most studious person among the McGinn children and focused on pursuing her educational qualification strongly. After graduating with her educational degrees, she started working as a Sales Associate for Next Retail in Glasgow Scotland for a few months in 2012.
She was then roped in by Morgan Stanley in September 2012 and would go onto spend an entire decade with the company. During that phase, she had seven different titles with the company, which began as a Global General Ledger Controller and then peaked as a director in the Liquidity Funding Control department.
During her time with Morgan Stanley, Katie also did a course with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants from 2016 to 2019. But she opted for a change in her life and moved to London in 2022, perhaps to be closer to John. She worked for just under a year for a marketing agency ItalSpirits from November, 2022 to September 2023.
She then worked as an interim finance manager for UK-based ice-cream company Hackney Gelato for a few months before assuming an Interim Finance Manager role at UK designer Pangaia in March 2024 in London. Katie has been working in that position for this year so far and seems to be excelling in her role, while John is thriving in his position as Aston Villa captain.
While all her brothers do their own thing in the British football scene, Katie has proven there is more to the McGinn family than just footballing genes by carving an admirable career in finance for herself and maintain her reputation as a strong, independent woman.
