Officially, the portion of the book "World Class" that was composed by Grant Wahl concludes after 313 pages, but those of us who know his work are well aware a “best-of” compilation of the articles and columns he wrote for Sports Illustrated and his own web site could have rivaled any Jonathan Franzen novel for page count.
Wahl’s wife, Dr. Celine Gounder, wrote the touching foreword to “World Class”, and the book was edited by his former SI colleagues Mark Mravic and Alexander Wolff. This is a collection of Wahl’s most lasting work, including the final piece he ever composed, written about the insolent reaction of a Qatari official to the workplace death of a foreign worker during the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
“We’re in the middle of a World Cup, and we have a successful World Cup. And this is something that you want to talk about right now?” Nasser Al-Khater said in an interview with the BBC. “I mean, death is a natural part of life, whether it’s at work, whether it’s in your sleep. Of course, a worker died. Our condolences go to his family. However, it’s strange that this is something that you wanted to focus on as your first question.”
This callous response provoked a powerful admonition from Wahl, in a column headlined, “They Just Don’t Care”:
“Al-Khater and the Qataris really do see themselves as the victims here and not what they really are: the rich and powerful petrobarons who have built an empire in the desert on the backs of far too many migrant workers who have been treated poorly and, yes, have died.
“How many have died? We’ll never know for sure, in part because Qatar hasn’t cared enough to document the losses.”
Grant Wahl a pioneer in socccer journalism
The whole of the piece is a superbly constructed treatise on the too-frequent deaths that occurred as Qatar prepared to play host to the World Cup. It is a reminder that although Wahl is commonly remembered as a pioneer in American soccer journalism, he placed tremendous emphasis on all three aspects of that endeavor. Especially the last.
There is no more appropriate example of how essential journalism was to Wahl’s character than the piece “The Qatar Chronicles, Part I” that appeared on the personal Substack website that housed his work for his final two years. Wahl relied on subscribers to the site to fund the enterprise, but he traveled to where the stories were as if working on a 2002 Sports Illustrated expense account. He was compelled to visit Qatar in advance of the World Cup to examine the issues of migrant worker treatment because it was a story that had to be told.
That Wahl emphasized the “soccer” element of his occupation, though, helped change the game for so many in his business.
When Wahl wrote the bestselling book, “The Beckham Experiment”, he still was spending as much time covering college basketball for SI as he did soccer. That was in 2008. ESPN pursued him, offering the chance to focus strictly on soccer, but he stayed with the magazine when it promised he could do the same. He became a full-time soccer writer, and that acknowledgment of the sport’s importance in America led to an increasing number of journalists and analysts finding their opportunities to excel in the same venue.
We spoke to several top soccer journalists to gain an understanding of what Wahl meant to American soccer journalism.
Doug McIntyre, FoxSports.com
He sort of became a minor celebrity in our world. I remember the 2010 MLS All-Star Game in Houston – MLS All-Stars against Manchester United. And MLS hosted an after party following the match, and a lot of the players were there. And Grant was there. And Grant was like the biggest star in the room. He was signing autographs. It was maybe a year after the Beckham book had come out.
And it was easy to forget what got him there, and how good he was as a journalist. He always seemed to know right away what the big story was, and he went straight for it, and he did a better job of telling it than anybody.
Part of that was just his force of will. He was ambitious. He believed in himself. He had a confidence about him. He knew he was good, and he wasn’t afraid to show other people he was. He could have done anything, and did. But Grant always had this passion for soccer. I think he realized how big the sport was globally and was sort of fascinated by the idea that it wasn’t that in the U.S. and there was this incredible potential, and there were all these amazing stories to be told.
Because he was so good, it opened the door for so many others.
It seems like everyone has a story to tell about how Grant helped them.
I have one, too.
In 2017, I was laid off by ESPN, along with about 100 other people. It was shocking. It was a major story in the sports world, not just the sports media world. And Grant was one of the first to reach out. He said, ‘Hey, I heard that Yahoo! is wanting to staff up on the soccer side, and maybe you should see if there’s anything there. And I did, and I followed up, and I ended up getting hired by Yahoo! about a year later. I reached out to Grant and thanked him, and I don’t even know if he remembered.
He never felt threatened by other writers. And that’s rare. Because there are people who are very territorial and they see anyone else who has some quality, who’s good, as a threat. And he never did.
Franco Panizo, Inter Miami CF Podcast
When I started considering soccer as a journalist as a profession, I was in college, and at that point – this was 2009, 2010 – Grant Wahl, Ives Galarcep and Steven Goff were the three top dogs in the business. I reached out to Ives, and things blossomed with his site. I met Grant along the way, and he was always asking about how you were doing, was friendly in that way.
As the years progressed and he saw the type of work I could do, I think I earned his respect. And because of that, I have two anecdotes I can share, one professional, one personal.
On a personal level, at one point, he asked me about a girl he knew and I knew that worked in the industry. He was kind of like trying to play Cupid. “What do you think about her?” She was nice, and I had talked to her. But nothing came of that.
When he passed, and his brother went on Twitter and talked about Grant, he said a very similar story about how he met his husband – or his ex-husband, because I think they got divorced about the time Grant passed. But the story resonated with me … it sounded very similar. I guess Grant, behind the journalistic hat, he liked to pair people together, to connect people. And that’s nice.
And I think if you look on a professional level, you see how that translates. And that’s where I’ll give you the professional angle.
When I was in New York, one of my final few years there covering the Red Bulls, covering New York City FC, he told someone at The Athletic, when they were first diving into soccer, about me. He thought I was somebody who would be a good candidate to cover the Red Bulls. I ultimately found out through the interview process Grant had recommended me.
Grant was always a helping hand, was always willing to encourage up-and-coming people professionally and personally for their development. He had the human level, as well as the professional level.
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philadelphia Inquirer
Grant fought the battle for soccer coverage in mainstream media, so long before a lot of us ended up doing the same thing, whether at local outlets or national outlets. And he was very open, over the years, once he became established, about what a fight it was.
Those of us who went through it looked to him for inspiration and figured if you could convince Frank Deford it was OK to cover soccer, maybe the rest of us could convince our bosses.
It’s been shown now – it’s been shown to be profitable. And it took a long, long time. And it’s not just men’s soccer. It’s women’s soccer. Grant was a great champion of that and saw potential early on, and he approached it with a philosophy that I think a lot of us share: Which is, yes, there are a lot of aspects off the field to women’s sports, for good reason, and things that have achieved progress in social justice and all kinds of things. But as a sports journalist, the biggest compliment you can pay is start by covering a soccer game like you would any other soccer game no matter who plays in it, or a basketball game like a basketball game no matter who plays in it. And Grant was at the forefront of that.
What you find out along the way is the players want the same thing.
In 2003, that was the first Women’s World Cup I covered, at RFK Stadium in DC, where I grew up. I was a sophomore in college, and that was one of the first big soccer things I was ever credentialed for.
So at RFK there’s one elevator, and it was a small elevator. The day the U.S. women played, there was doubleheader. If you didn’t want to wait for the elevator … I walked up the ramps instead of taking the elevator. And even though I’d been to that stadium many times, I wasn’t sure which ramp was the right one to get to the press box. So I look up, and I see Grant from behind, and of course he’s impossible to miss because of his very bald head. And I followed him and made it to the press box.
And so I like to joke that at the first Women’s World Cup I ever covered, I literally rode Grant Wahl’s coattails.
Michael Lewis, FrontRowSoccer.com
At one time, way back in 2000, CNN and Sports Illustrated had a sports website, and they had Grant doing soccer and also college basketball. And they brought me in to help with the soccer coverage. We’d go back and forth in our columns. It was an interesting dynamic there. Unfortunately, it was like the first internet bust. CNN/SI slowly got rid of us.
The thing about Grant was, he would think out of the box. And he inspired me to do other stories, or to consider doing other stories. I might not have had the same resources, but I would want to do something different. Maybe doing something about CONCACAF, because people don’t understand what it’s like for U.S. teams, particularly the men, to play in the Caribbean and Central America. And I’ve been able to cover various games, to give readers an idea what it’s all about.
One thing I remember is when Grant went to Iceland to do stories about the Iceland national team. I had been to Iceland to do some stories, but he did his much more in depth – it gave me a different perspective of the country, as well.
I looked at Grant as being an inspiration as a writer to think way out of the box to do something different, to make a point. I might be a veteran writer, but I look at other people’s writings and see how they put together different sentences or the entire story, and I try to learn from that. I’ve learned a lot from Grant and other writers that way.
Grant was obviously not afraid to ask the hardball questions, but sometimes the simple questions to get a response. I know at a press conference we all want to show off our knowledge, or catch someone. We all have our moments to throw that hardball. But sometimes Grant would throw that softball-type question and get a really good response.
Patrick Brennan, Cincinnati Enquirer
I thought Grant was the best of us. I thought he wanted to grow the sport, and he wanted to grow the media support of the sport, and he used his platform to lift up other people in the soccer media ecosystem. I thought that was one of his lasting contributions to the game in this country, the fact that he had no problem at any time giving due credit to a reporter covering this game – whether it’s the blogger sitting on his mom’s couch or someone at an established legacy media enterprise.
He would give credit in the soccer world to all of those people.
He was such a thorough journalist – not just in soccer, but all the things he covered.
People think of sports as the candy aisle, but Grant was out there putting himself in harm’s way. He took up the mantle of journalism and took it very seriously. He was putting himself in uncomfortable, dangerous spots to shed light on the game.
During the pandemic lockdown period, there were no sports to cover and I was trying to make myself as useful as possible. During the George Floyd protests, I would go out and help with the coverage. I was arrested briefly, and then was released. It was a traumatic thing – maybe more traumatic for my family and friends because a local TV station ended up carrying it live. You never want to be in the story, a part of the story, but unfortunately that was a big piece of the protests that day, that a journalist was arrested.
I had an interview with Jaap Stam for the following morning on the books for weeks, and he had just been hired as FC Cincinnati’s new manager. I did everything I had to do with the Enquirer and their legal team on the arrest, and someone from FC Cincinnati asked if I was going to go ahead with the interview with Jaap, that we could reschedule it. And I thought: No! I’ve been waiting weeks for this. So I interviewed him … and I knocked the story out by midday that day.
And Grant put a tweet out. He quote-tweeted my story, highlighted my work and made note of the fact I was back to writing about soccer and interviewing someone who was very significant to the global game the morning after I had been arrested.
To get that recognition from Grant was the biggest boost I could have received in that situation. It was bigger than any word of encouragement my parents could have given me, that my bosses could have given me. And it was because it was Grant.
