Sir Kenny Dalglish and Karen Carney have been named winners of the Professional Footballers' Association's Merit Award for 2026, recognising a lasting contribution to football. The pair are honoured at Tuesday evening's PFA Awards ceremony in Manchester, where this season's Player of the Year winners from both the men's and women's game will also be revealed.
Dalglish, 75, built a career as both player and manager. He left Celtic for Liverpool in 1977 for a British record fee and spent 14 years at Anfield, winning three European Cups and eight top-flight titles in 515 appearances, and finishing runner-up for the Ballon d'Or in 1983. As player-manager from 1985, he won two FA Cups and three of his eight league titles as boss, including the 1985-86 double, before retiring as a player in 1990 and stepping down as manager the following February. He later took Blackburn to the Premier League title in 1995, had further spells at Celtic and Newcastle, and returned to Liverpool to win the League Cup in 2012. He remains Scotland's most-capped men's international on 102 appearances, matching Denis Law's national goalscoring record of 30.
Off the pitch, Dalglish was a steadying figure for Liverpool in the difficult years that followed the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, and has since raised millions of pounds for cancer care through the Marina Dalglish Appeal, set up in 2005 after his wife's own breast cancer treatment. He revealed in June 2026 that he is himself undergoing treatment for cancer.
Carney, 39, started out at Birmingham City before a move to Arsenal brought a full sweep of the domestic and European honours in 2006-07, a quadruple that included the Uefa Women's Cup, forerunner to the Women's Champions League. Two seasons with Chicago Red Stars followed before she rejoined Birmingham and scored an extra-time equaliser in the next season's FA Cup final, then moved to Chelsea in 2015, winning the WSL and FA Cup double in 2017-18 and later captaining the side before retiring in 2019. She won her first England cap as a 17-year-old in 2005 and went on to make 144 appearances and score 32 goals for the Lionesses, helping the side finish third at the 2015 World Cup among eight major tournaments, and also represented Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics. Since retiring she has built a career in broadcasting and chaired a government-commissioned review of the women's game, published in 2023.