Kieron Dyer is talking about gratitude for something that has not happened yet. He knows that his chance of new life depends upon another person’s death.
He knows that the second part of his life will be born amid the grief and mourning of another person’s family and friends. What matters to him most is that, if he gets the liver transplant he needs, he honours the memory of the person who saved him.
Dyer is 43 years old. Twenty years ago this week he was playing for England in a World Cup quarter-final against Brazil but last year he was told a rare condition he suffers from — primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) — a disease that scars the bile ducts and gradually causes serious liver damage, had worsened and that he needed a transplant.