We spoke to a reporter currently in Qatar about the talented journalist and the energy at these games.
After over 25 years of covering the sport, Grant Wahl had earned the title of one of America’s most prominent soccer journalists. He had covered seven World Cups before arriving in Qatar this fall to report on another one of the global tournaments. The experience, as Wahl and others have described it, is exhilarating. It’s a jubilant month-long celebration that draws hundreds of thousands of fans from around the world. It’s also — for members of the press — a grueling ordeal.
“It’s extremely intense. There is no sleep,” Kevin Baxter, a Los Angeles Times reporter currently covering his sixth World Cup, tells us. “You’re going all the time, and people break down.”
Wahl was no exception. He had been writing extensively about his time in Qatar, including about an illness he’d developed while there. He initially brushed it off as a common cold, but earlier this month ahead of the United States’ knockout round game against the Netherlands, he wrote in his popular newsletter that it had “turned into something more severe.” Baxter says Wahl had been complaining of being sick and went to a clinic where he was diagnosed with bronchitis — “or what they thought was bronchitis.”
Even still, Wahl was reporting from the tournament at a ferocious pace, writing daily articles, recording his podcast, and regularly updating fans on Twitter up until he died suddenly last Friday.
What happened to Grant Wahl during the World Cup?
Baxter met Wahl while covering the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and in 2014 at the World Cup in Brazil they stayed in adjoining rooms for a month, “so I knew him well,” he says. Baxter was in the press area near Wahl watching the quarterfinal between Argentina and the Netherlands last Friday. The game was pushed into overtime and was arguably the most exciting match of the tournament. “There were 82,000 people in the stands. Everybody was on their feet” when Baxter says he heard the journalists behind him screaming for help.
“I turned around and I thought there was a fire or something there in the stands,” he tells us.
When Baxter turned around and looked to where Wahl had been sitting, he saw the journalist with his head back in his seat. “He was lifeless,” Baxter says. “I realized right at that point that something horrific had happened to Grant.”
Baxter spoke to the people who’d been next to Wahl at the time. “He made no sounds, there were no complaints. He just leaned back in his chair and that was it. People thought he was stretching when he leaned back. And then they looked over and realized something was wrong.”
Medical personnel arrived quickly to attend to Wahl, but Baxter says they weren’t able to move him into an ambulance for “20 to 30 minutes.”
News of Wahl’s passing shocked the soccer world. The journalist was 49 and reportedly in great shape, which prompted many to question how this could have happened. Just hours after his death, Wahl’s brother, Eric Wahl, said in a since-deleted Instagram video, that he believed he was murdered for speaking out against the host nation.
Wahl had been relentless in his criticism of Qatar for its human rights record and its treatment of LGBTQ citizens. Security at the tournament had confronted Wahl, Baxter, fans, and players for wearing rainbow apparel as a show of support for the LGBTQ community. Wahl tweeted that he was briefly detained for wearing a rainbow shirt at one of the matches last month. (Baxter says the same thing happened to him when he wore a rainbow face mask to one of the games. He says in both cases they were asked to remove the items, declined to do so, and were eventually allowed inside.)
Wahl’s body was returned to the U.S. so an autopsy could be conducted. On Wednesday, his wife Dr. Céline Gounder revealed that he had died of a slowly growing aortic aneurysm.
“The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms,” she wrote in an edition of Wahl’s newsletter. “There was nothing nefarious about his death.”
The response to Wahl’s death
Wahl was honored the day after his death during the quarterfinal match between France and England. A photo of Wahl was displayed on screens in the stadium and a bouquet of roses was left on his seat in the press area.
“Tonight we pay tribute to Grant Wahl at his assigned seat in Al Bayt Stadium. He should have been here,” FIFA said in a statement. “Our thoughts remain with his wife Céline, his family, and his friends at this most difficult time.”
“It was the most touching part of the whole thing for me because dozens of journalists from around the world came by to pay their respects,” Baxter recalls. “They came to the American reporters and asked us how we were doing and hugged us. It was really touching to know that one person had an impact on so many other people.”
Unfortunately, Wahl is not the only journalist to have died covering this tournament. Two others, Roger Pearce, the technical director of a U.K. broadcaster, and Khalid al-Misslam, a Qatari photojournalist, both passed in Qatar. That has certainly dampened the mood among the press corps. Baxter says some of his colleagues didn’t work or go to any of the events in the days following Wahl’s death, as they “tried to come to grips with what had happened.” Some are even considering leaving the tournament.
There’s growing concern about a strain of influenza and some sort of respiratory bug that both appear to be circulating at the event. In an episode of his podcast, Wahl discussed how a lot of attendees seem to be falling ill: “Everyone’s coughing here. This is by no means limited to me. So many journalists have got a crazy cough that it sounds like a death rattle sometimes.”
Baxter says he’s come down with a persistent cough too — and that he doesn’t know anyone who’s been there more than a couple of weeks who hasn’t. “We’re all dealing with this in one way or another.”
Wahl‘s legacy
The club of full-time soccer journalists in the U.S. is not large. Everyone covering the sport knew Wahl; he was a force, Baxter says. Wahl began his career at Sports Illustrated, making a name for himself with a 2002 cover story on LeBron James about the superstar while he was still in high school. He later transitioned to cover solely soccer and quickly distinguished himself as an authority on the game in the U.S., writing two books on the sport, Masters of Modern Soccer and The Beckham Experiment, about David Beckham’s time playing in America.
He was massively influential and his stories had the power to shape the discourse on the sport, Baxter says. One example of his sway came in the run-up to the 2018 World Cup. The U.S. Men’s National Team had gotten off to a bad start and after a particularly embarrassing 4-0 loss to Costa Rica, there were rumblings that it was time to bring in a new manager.
After the game, as the journalists gathered for the press conference with then coach Jürgen Klinsmann, the first question they all thought to ask him was whether he was the right person for the job, Baxter recalls.
“Everyone was kind of looking at each other, thinking, ‘Who’s going to ask the question? Someone needs to ask this question,’” Baxter says. While everyone twisted in their chairs, Wahl stood up and “very boldly” stared down Klinsmann and asked him if he thought he was the right man to lead the program forward.
“Jürgen Klinsmann never coached another game for the U.S. national team,” Baxter says. “[Grant] could set the agenda, his soccer reporting was at the forefront of a lot of the conversations in the U.S.”
He’ll be remembered as an ambitious reporter who loved the sport of winning a scoop.
“You respected him,” Baxter says. “And if there were those of us who were jealous of him or wanted to beat him, that’s because we knew he was the best.”
