Scott McTominay has revealed he underwent shock treatment for an irregular heartbeat just days before Scotland's World Cup opener against Haiti, a procedure he says left him "far from ideal" but never in doubt about playing.
The midfielder was diagnosed with a mild benign arrhythmia, first reported in September, which required surgery and sidelined him for Napoli and Scotland. McTominay noticed the symptoms a few days before Scotland's first match at this summer's World Cup, against Haiti, and told manager Steve Clarke, who took his concerns seriously.
He was given a police escort to hospital in Boston, where doctors used anaesthetic to put him to sleep before resetting his heart with shock treatment. The 29-year-old has now spoken publicly about the experience for the first time.
What McTominay said about the procedure
Speaking at a press conference ahead of Scotland's Nations League match against North Macedonia on Friday, McTominay described the sensation: "Atrial fibrillation is a fairly normal routine thing for people in general. They might not know that they have it. But when you're an elite athlete across football or sport, you know if you've got something that's different. Whenever you're running, you check your pulse and it's got a slight irregular beat there."
He added: "It feels like your heart's coming out of your chest. That's the sensation that you have. That it's pumping, but not a regular heartbeat, like bum, bum, bum, bum. Mine was going bum, bu-bu-bum, bum, bu-bu-bum. So you know the difference."
Reflecting on the impact, McTominay said: "Was it on my mind in the games? No, I put it to bed. I tried my best, anyway. Whenever you go under anaesthetic and you have to get put to sleep, it decreases the athletic performance a little bit, as well as your sleep and stuff like that. But you have to get back round to doing it again. It was far from ideal but those are the cards you're dealt, there's nothing you can do about it."
World Cup campaign and aftermath
Scotland opened their World Cup campaign with a 1-0 win over Haiti in Boston, but McTominay was not at his best. Clarke's side were then beaten by Brazil and Morocco to exit at the group stage, prompting criticism of their talismanic midfielder.
McTominay said he would never have missed those games and did not let the criticism affect him. "You know yourself as a professional footballer if you're not quite where you should be," he said. "You just try to block it out. Were there concerns from my family about playing? No, I wouldn't have listened to it. They had just flown 10 hours for the first game of the World Cup."
He added: "I didn't sit there thinking I might not play. That would never be the case. I was always going to play in that game. Maybe selfishly, I don't know. I'd worked for 20 years as a young footballer and as a professional to get to that point. To try and play well at a World Cup. Players play with injuries all the time when they're not quite right. But I was fully functional."
McTominay admitted the disappointment lingered after the tournament. "It wasn't easy after the World Cup. I probably had two or three weeks of putting my head in the sand, thinking we let one slip. That was the bottom line. It took me longer than it normally would to get over disappointment in football. The reason why I felt like that was because we could have done more. It was probably one of the worst moments of my career."
