The transplant journey of an England goalkeeper

Five years after having a liver transplant, Jon Bailey is getting ready to play in goal for England - at the 2026 Transplant Football World Cup.

The event in Germany in September will see teams made up of transplant patients battling it out for the trophy.

For Bailey, it will be the culmination of a long journey from finding out he needed a transplant to setting up a gold-winning transplant football team in Birmingham.

"Football has played a huge part in my recovery. It gave me a goal, a community and something positive to focus on," he said.

The 41-year-old, from Wolverhampton, helped establish Birmingham's transplant football team and they went on to win gold at the British transplant games in 2024 and 2025.

Bailey's transplant journey began when he was 13, when he said he felt "absolutely fine", but doctors discovered his liver was becoming scarred.

As a teenager, he was "playing football, still active and doing everything my friends were doing" but years later he said he "wasn't living any sort of life".

"I had a young daughter at home and that was the hardest part. I just tried to take things one day at a time and stay strong for my family," he added.

"When doctors started talking about liver disease, I couldn't really get my head around it because I didn't feel ill at all."

Investigations revealed he had autoimmune hepatitis, a condition causing the body's immune system to attack the liver and, as he entered adulthood, his health deteriorated.

Bailey found himself increasingly exhausted in his work as a bartender and, by 2019, his liver disease had progressed to the point where he was put on the transplant waiting list.

After a transplant operation at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham in 2021, he now attends regular hospital appointments but has been able to return to football.

"All I know about my donor is that she passed away in her 20s and her family gave their consent to donate her organs, which has ultimately changed my life," Bailey said.

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