In January 2025, Williams underwent valve-sparing aortic root replacement surgery, followed by a dual-chamber pacemaker implantation.<\/p>\n
But complications meant he was admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) and treated for sepsis, a collapsed lung and respiratory failure.<\/p>\n
After 11 days in ICU, Williams recovered and underwent a second, successful operation in September 2025, which he hoped would allow him to continue playing.<\/p>\n
“When I got back, I couldn’t perform at 100%. I would sprint up the pitch, and I’d feel gassed, out of breath, and my legs were heavy,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Initially, I thought it was my fitness after returning from a second heart surgery.<\/p>\n
“But I had heart failure. My ejection fracture percentage was only 37%, meaning my heart was not pumping as well as it should be.”<\/p>\n
Most fit and healthy adults will have a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) that ranges between 50% and 70%.<\/p>\n
Williams was given medication to combat his LVEF – he now takes five tablets every day – and was fitted with an upgraded pacemaker.<\/p>\n
“I still didn’t feel 100%. Again, I thought it was my fitness, but I was still feeling the same two months later when I should have been back to normal.”<\/p>\n
A recent echocardiogram showed practically no sign of improvement. Williams’ LVEF had only increased to 38%.<\/p>\n
“That’s when I decided that I will have to stop playing because I couldn’t carry on physically with how I felt,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In January 2025, Williams underwent valve-sparing aortic root replacement surgery, followed by a dual-chamber pacemaker implantation. But complications…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-820688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}