Former England goalkeeper Alex McCarthy says doctors advised him to retire from football due to a covid-related heart problem.The 36-year-old, who currently plays for League One side Leicester City., considered calling time on his career towards the end of the pandemic.McCarthy has revealed that he was told to retire by doctors after he was found to have a heart conditionGettyMcCarthy has not revealed the timeline of the diagnosis but he did not feature in a competitive match between December 2021 and May 2022 while contracted at Southampton.The shot-stopper, who earned his only England cap in a friendly against the USA in 2018 admits to having no symptoms from the issue.However, when doctors discovered the problem, he was strongly advised to hang up his gloves.How was McCarthy’s condition found?“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,” McCarthy told the Fozcast podcast.“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’.“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.”McCarthy opted for a second opinion from a London-based doctor before making any hasty decisions.McCarthy, who has one England cap to his name, took a year away from playing and managed to make a comeback despite his conditionGettyAnd the veteran goalkeeper later underwent a procedure that enabled him to continue his career.How did McCarthy continue playing?“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’,” McCarthy added.“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.”