Judy Kandal’s dream to one day play football in Saudi Arabia was almost cut short when his vision began to blur  and he was “seeing three footballs instead of one”.

Eye tests revealed that the 21-year-old had an eye condition known as keratoconus in which his cornea – the clear, dome-shaped front of his eye – became thinner and gradually bulged outward into a cone shape.

This resulted in distorted vision because the job of the cornea is the refraction of light and focusing.

Five months ago, he underwent a partial cornea transplant and is now about to resume his passion and play football again.

“If my life was at 60%, I feel like it’s at 90% now,” said Judy as he sat for an interview in the operating theatre at St Thomas Hospital where, five months ago, transplant surgeon Andre Grixti replaced part of his cornea.

Judy, who is Kurdish, moved to Malta when he was three years old. He was born in Turkey and his family then moved to Syria and, later, Iraq. In 2006, during the Iraqi civil war, the family came to Malta where they had other relatives, including Judy’s grandparents.

“We came for a better future and Malta was able to provide that and I’m very thankful for that,” he says.

Judy attended primary and secondary school in Malta and went on to become a restaurant manager. Football has been a great love of his since he picked up a ball at the age of six.

Judy Kandal’s eye.

“I started playing with Ħamrun Spartans and spent eight years there. Then, I moved to Melita for a year… There was an activity for players who wanted to try joining the Stoke City FC Academy in the UK. I went for it and got chosen but, a week before I was meant to go to London, my grandfather died of cancer, so I did not go,” he says.

The promising striker was also shortlisted to play with Malta’s national team but could not be part of the squad as he does not have Maltese citizenship.

Then, about three years ago, round about the time when he joined Gżira United, he started noticing that something was wrong with his vision.

“My vision was so clear before but, as years passed, I started noticing my vision was going blurry. At work, I couldn’t see clearly when taking bookings… when playing football, I would see three balls rather than one.”

At first, he thought this could be a symptom of exhaustion. But, after some time, he went to see a doctor.

His doctor was Grixti who is leading a new programme of full and partial cornea transplants at St Thomas Hospital, a private hospital in Qormi.

The hospital recently began performing transplants with corneas from abroad after entering a strategic partnership with a European tissue bank – Banc De Sang Teixits.

Transplant surgeon Andre Grixti.

Based in Barcelona, Spain, the organ bank is supplying donated corneas to patients at St Thomas Hospital. This means they do not have to rely on the limited local cornea donations.

Grixti explains that the cornea is made of three main layers: the outer layer, or epithelium, the stroma and the inner endothelium. 

“Conventionally, a full transplant is carried out that replaces the full cornea. However, certain diseases affect a particular layer of the cornea, and we have now moved to partial transplants,” he said.

One condition that benefits from this type of partial transplant is keratoconus – Judy’s condition.

In this case, the intervention carried out is called a deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK) that involves replacing the two top layers and keeping the inner layer, which is the one that leads to most corneal rejection. This also means a faster recovery time for the patient.

Judy has about a month left before he can be cleared to return back to the pitch. Now that his operation has been successful, he has set his sight beyond Maltese shores.

“I dream to go to Saudi Arabia, or any Middle Eastern country, to play football,” he says.