Ryan Child, a 36-year-old kidney transplant recipient from Dilton Marsh, Wiltshire, has returned home as a World Cup winner after helping an England Football Team win the (Transplant Football) World Cup for the first time since 1966.
Players from across the UK, who were recipients of a kidney, heart or other organ via transplantation, were selected for the squad. The tournament campaign featured a challenging group stage, with wins against Romania, Colombia and the Netherlands, alongside a narrow defeat to Chile.
England powered past Italy in the quarterfinals, and after a hard-fought victory against Wales in a tense semi-final encounter, they put on a convincing win against Spain to secure the World Cup title.
For Ryan, who received a kidney in 2022, representing the country on the global stage was a significant milestone.
Reflecting on the tournament, Ryan said:
It is an incredible feeling to return home as a World Cup winner. After everything involved in my transplant journey, pulling on the England shirt and playing alongside this group of players in Germany was a privilege. Every match presented its own challenge, but we stuck together through to the final.
Ryan became aware of the team after meeting manager Daley Cross at the 2024 British Transplant Games (BTG) in Nottingham. Kidney Care UK funded Daley Cross’s position as a Youth Worker at the Oxford Transplant Centre, Oxford University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust from 2014 to 2017. Following the impact Daley and his team had, the hospital has now taken over the funding for the position.
The Transplant Football World Cup tournament, like the BTG, provides an opportunity for people living with a transplant to meet peers from across the world, both competing against one another but also sharing experiences and normalising transplantation.
After his kidney disease diagnosis and ending up receiving dialysis treatment, Ryan didn’t ever think he would play sport at a professional level again until his kidney transplant. The opportunity to train and play with other footballers from professional academies, all of whom were living with a transplant, has helped him make the most of life after transplantation.
You can speak about transplantation at an event like the World Cup, and it doesn’t feel out of the ordinary. No one is looking at you differently or feeling sorry for you. There are people feeling fatigued, taking medication, but chatting openly about it all as if they were just talking about the weather. It is a beautiful atmosphere to be in, normalising conversations that, to most people, are extraordinary.
The tournament aims to raise public awareness of organ donation and showcase the physical rehabilitation of transplant recipients.
The thing that struck me the most was how many families were there. Mums, dads, kids, partners. At an event like that, you realise just how many people transplantation affects and how positive it is. Not just for the recipient, but for the family.
For Ryan, his kidney transplant has meant he has been able to be more involved with his daughter. It has provided him with opportunities to start his own business, get married, buy a house and have more children.
After the tournament, my wife posted on Instagram about organ donation with a picture of my daughter holding an England flag at a train station, waiting for me to return home. My kidney transplant has changed that little girl’s life. With kidney disease specifically, knowing how hard kidney failure can be and how effective transplant is as a treatment, it is about encouraging people to talk openly about living organ donation.
This success is shared with our donors and their families. Without them, none of us would be on the pitch playing the game we love. I hope this achievement encourages people in Wiltshire to talk about organ donation and sign up to the organ donation register.