Grant Wahl: A charming, kind, and talented journalist

CNN
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It was five in the morning and I couldn’t sleep; My mind was replaying the extraordinary drama of Argentina win on penalties Over Holland again and again.

Then I checked my phone. I thought I was going to vomit.

American Football Journalist Grant Wall who was also covering the match in Lusail, has passed away.

At first, social media was filled with disturbing rumors, but then came the terrifying confirmation. It all seemed too sudden and strange to be true.

Grant has been tweeting about the match, and he posted about the unlikely Dutch equalizer in stoppage time that took the game into extra time. But then, as more than 80,000 fans took on the drama on the field, Grant was fighting for his life. As we now know, frantic efforts to revive it were tragically unsuccessful.

If my personal experience is anything to go by, for many journalists covering the World Cup in Qatar, the hours since have been a surreal, nauseating blur.

I don’t remember the first time I met Grant. Maybe he was in New York to hire Jurgen Klinsmann as head coach of the US Soccer team in 2011, or maybe we didn’t actually meet in person until the World Cup in Qatar.

But such is the nature of our work that we orbited each other and interacted so much through social media and through our televised interviews that we became friends.

On many occasions our conversations took place via Skype or Zoom, and I can vividly remember one occasion when his wife, Celine, accidentally walked into the room and almost stepped out in front of a world-class audience. He deftly waved it away without breaking his stride.

In subsequent years, epidemiologist Dr. Celine Gunder became one of the public faces of the scientific fight against Covid 19, and he was rarely able to hide his pride in her accomplishments. He was gushing around to me just two weeks ago.

As a writer for Sports Illustrated, Wahl quickly made his name, introducing then-high school athlete LeBron James to the world with one of his many cover stories and headlines, “The Chosen One.” Just hours after his death, NBA great James led the honors to Wall, He lamented, “It’s such a tragic loss. It’s so sad to lose someone as great as him.”

But as a football writer, Wahl really made his name. He was a fan of the beautiful game in North America, long before it was fashionable – a decade before Premier League mornings became a staple in many American households, some Major League Soccer stadiums drew crowds of over 70,000.

Famed British football commentator John Champion told me that when he crossed the Atlantic to join ESPN in 2019, Wal was the first to roll out the red carpet. “He was selling the idea of ​​soccer in the United States,” he said. “He was almost an evangelist in that sense, traveling the world, telling people to take American football seriously. If you asked any of the European frontline soccer journalists what their first point of contact was if they wanted a story in America, it would be Grant.” Wal.”

For this reason, both the NFL and Major League Soccer paid their respects on such glowing terms. Wahl was as important as any player in the development of the game in America.

The acclaim on Saturday was so great that no one could doubt his influence. “I’m not sure people outside the US understand Grant’s impact on football there,” British football broadcaster Max Rushden tweeted, “I certainly didn’t until I read the salute.”

But there was a lot of depth to Grant, because he wasn’t just a reporter who wrote about wins and losses. Fearless in his pursuit of the truth, he routinely shines an uncomfortably bright light on the dark side of professional sports highlighting human rights abuses, and speaks out on behalf of those voices that have been silenced.

In 2011, a few months after FIFA’s controversial decision to award Qatar the current World Cup, he campaigned for his election as the new president, promising to rid football’s global governing body of corruption, “Let’s fix FIFA from corruption.” [Sepp] Blatter infection.

He has been a constant thorn in the FIFA squad, and once in Qatar seemed like a magnet for controversy. When he got his media credit at the start of the tournament, he took a picture of the tournament logo on the wall. stated that he had been contacted by security officials, and inexplicably told to delete the photo from his phone. Several days later, I found myself in the same spot, observing to my colleagues the now infamous “Wahl’s Wall.”

Before the United States’ first game against Wales, he was asked to Remove the rainbow shirt which he wore as a discreet show of support for the LGBTQ community. Only after he was arrested by stadium security and ordered removed (he refused) did the story become public.

Two days later, we both attended the same Thanksgiving lunch at the Iconic Torch, and later that night, at 1:30am, he joined us live in our studio in Doha. He was keen to appear on the show, but was so busy that this was the only slot he had available.

Before the interview, he described his new independent business venture, GrantWahl.Com, and shared that he worried he might not break through on the trip. He also told us that he’s been setting strict goals for himself to deliver content to his paying subscribers.

The intense ground mass of the World Cup in Qatar gave both journalists and fans the unique opportunity to attend multiple matches each day, but the intense schedule, featuring three or four matches every 24 hours for 17 consecutive days, was grueling. However, many have found the multi-action irresistible.

We later learn that Wahl fell ill during the tournament, something he says he expected after covering several World Cups in the past. He said on an episode of the podcast that he went to the medical clinic in the World Cup media center, and felt tightness in his chest and he feared it might be bronchitis. Football with Grant Wall.

But that night, we were joking about the fact that on only the fifth day of the tournament, I had lost my voice. Qatar wasn’t my first ‘rodeo’, but it was my first participation in a World Cup, and my body soon succumbed to the journey through eight time zones and the grueling schedule.

But when I think about that interview, it contained a lot of the things that many of us loved about Grant. He was charming, kind and so happy to cover his eighth Men’s World Cup and the match he loved. We discussed the jersey adventure, Cristiano Ronaldo’s latest antics, and the impending conflict between Team USA and England.

“There is a quest for respect from the United States,” he explains, looking for validation from a country that has historically looked down its nose at the growth of the same game with a different name across the pond. But he knew that now the tide was beginning to turn and attitudes were changing.

As with life itself, there is always a time limit to an interview, and we’re nearing the end. Needing a quick line to shut him down and get him back to the main studio, I thanked Grant and told him it would be “interesting to see what happens next”.

None of us could have imagined that the next chapter of his extraordinary life and career would be suddenly, and so horribly, final.