Fulham midfielder Kevin McDonald to undergo kidney transplant next month
The Fulham midfielder Kevin McDonald has revealed he will undergo a kidney transplant next month, having spent his playing career managing chronic kidney disease.
McDonald, who is 32, was first diagnosed at the age of 18 and has managed his condition during a playing career that has included 500 appearances for Dundee, Burnley, Sheffield United and Wolves. McDonald joined Fulham in 2016 and collected the first of five international caps for Scotland in 2018.
“I’ve been fighting a chronic kidney disease, or kidney failure ever since I started playing football,” McDonald told FFCtv. “I’ve had it my whole career and been under the orders of the doctors throughout my whole career. No one sees this part of football. People just see you on the pitch and they have their opinions of you and that’s that.
“I’ve had a lot of people asking about why am I not playing, why am I not going out on loan. It is something that we didn’t want to share until this moment because obviously [with] what’s coming up it needs to be said now. I just wanted to come out with this.”
McDonald, who was left out of
Scott Parker’s 25-man Premier League squad and has not played for Fulham this season, has been gaining coaching experience with the club’s under-23 squad. He hopes to play again in the lower leagues after his scheduled transplant in April, which was made possible when friends and family put themselves forward to become donors.
“I’ve known I’ve needed a kidney transplant for nearly 12 years now. I’ve loved my whole career in football but at the same time, in the back of my mind, my health has always been my priority. Football is a game but we’re talking about life-threatening diseases,” McDonald said. “I’ve got one kidney that doesn’t work at all and one kidney that’s about 10% now. I’ve been playing with stage one, to now stage five kidney disease, which is chronic kidney disease, kidney failure.”
“It’s a part of me opening up about it – of course there were certain reasons to not tell anyone, so people and football clubs and businesses might not want to employ you as such. But now, knowing that I’m towards the end of my career I’ve taken the decision to pick health over football, this season especially.”
Fulham posted a segment of McDonald’s video message on their official Twitter account on Tuesday morning, with the message “we’re all behind you, Kev”.
Ipswich Town’s takeover is nearing completion, with a largely US-led consortium closing in on assuming control of the League One club.
The Guardian understands that the deal, which could see the current owner, Marcus Evans, receive up to £30m, is undergoing regulatory processes and should be finalised within weeks. Assuming no issues arise, Evans’ 13-year-spell running the Suffolk club will come to an end well before the end of the season.
It will complete a period of dramatic change at Ipswich, who parted company with Paul Lambert on Sunday night and have replaced him with Paul Cook on a contract to 2023. The appointment of Cook, who left Wigan in July, was overseen by Evans and the existing regime.
Ipswich’s new owners will be a consortium whose capital is sourced from the US. Three of the group’s members – Berke Bakay, Brett Johnson and Mark Detmer – are co-owners of Phoenix Rising in the United Soccer League, which is in effect the country’s secondhighest level.
In July 2020 the three men created a UK company named Gamechanger 20 Limited, whose nature of business is described as “operation of sports facilities”, along with the former Oxford United and West Brom director Mike O’Leary. They were joined in January by a new director, Edward Schwartz, who is thought to be an Ohio-based portfolio manager.
Johnson is the founder of Fortuitous Partners, a sports investment fund, as well as being founder and
CEO of a private equity investment firm based in California. He is also a director of the US-owned Danish secondtier club, Helsingør. Bakay is Phoenix Rising’s club governor and runs a hedge fund, also in California. The group have not been available for comment.
Earlier on Monday the Ipswich general manager, Lee O’Neill, had reiterated the long standing line that Evans was “not actively looking to sell the club” and explained there “isn’t an offer on the table”. But the process is now in its latter stages and Ipswich will hope for a change of fortunes after an unhappy couple of decades.
Evans, who is expected to retain a 5% stake in the club and will in effect write off around £100m of debt owed to him, took over with high hopes of a quick promotion to the Premier League but Ipswich stagnated in the second tier instead. They were finally relegated in 2019 and sit eighth in this season’s League One, although their form improved in the final few matches of Lambert’s turbulent reign.