Alex McCarthy Reveals Doctors Advised Retirement After Heart Condition

Former England goalkeeper Alex McCarthy revealed doctors advised him to stop playing football after tests during the COVID-19 pandemic found a heart condition, with the issue discovered while he was at Southampton despite having no symptoms.

According to talkSPORT, the 36-year-old missed competitive matches from December 2021 to May 2022 before returning after treatment. McCarthy, now with Leicester City in League One, sought another medical opinion and continued his career.

McCarthy explained the discovery process on the Fozcast podcast after routine pandemic testing led to further examinations of his heart.

"I don’t think I’ve spoken about it before. It was coming out the back end of Covid when I missed a year because I had a heart condition from Covid," said McCarthy.

The goalkeeper said doctors monitored the issue after tests detected irregularities, although he did not experience symptoms.

"Not many people know this. I think it was during Covid, when you had to have all the tests. I had to wear a heart patch.

I think a few of the lads in football who had Covid had to. They picked up some formalities with my heart. I had no symptoms or anything.

So they monitored it for a while but I couldn’t get signed off to play. I ended up getting called in by the doc at Southampton to see a specialist down in Southampton. He was like, ‘Bring your agent and your wife’.

I was like, ‘This can’t be good’," said McCarthy.

McCarthy was initially told by a specialist that he might need to end his playing career and consider a defibrillator, prompting him to seek another assessment in London.

"Turned up there and the guy basically said, ‘You can’t play football anymore, you need a defib fitted like Christian Eriksen and that’. This was out of nowhere. I felt fine," said McCarthy.

The former Southampton goalkeeper later underwent a procedure that allowed him to return to professional football after several months away.

"Long story short, I had to have a think about what I wanted to do. I said to Southampton that I wanted a second opinion. [I] go up to this guy in London and he said, ‘I think I can sort this’," said McCarthy.

The London specialist performed an ablation procedure after identifying a heartbeat issue during exercise, and a monitoring chip was placed in McCarthy’s chest.

"A month or two later I had to go back to London. They cut my groin open, I had to be awake for this because they needed the heartbeat to be normal. They put a tube up to my heart and did an ablation where they burn a part of your heart.

They found that when I was exercising, my heart would skip quite a few beats. They then put a chip in my chest, which is linked to my phone to them to always monitor it. I missed a good few months, and I had to go through all that to get signed off to play again. [I’ve] gone from nearly having to retire to still playing.

It’s mental," said McCarthy.

McCarthy has had a 19-year professional career, playing for clubs including Reading, Brentford, Leeds, Ipswich, QPR, Crystal Palace and Southampton. He earned his only England cap in a friendly against the United States in 2018 and joined Leicester City on a free transfer.