After shocking death of soccer writer Grant Wahl in Qatar, here’s how to honor his life

Last Thursday, there were so many angles at soccer’s World Cup in Qatar that would have been easy for a veteran journalist like Grant Wahl to knock out for his daily piece — like the benching of Portugal icon Cristiano Ronaldo, or the hopes of Argentina resting on the shoulders of world-best Lionel Messi one final time.

But Wahl, although a sharp observer of the beautiful game, didn’t go with any of that. Instead, the former Sports Illustrated scribe with a large online following wrote about an obscure Filipino migrant who died in a horrific forklift accident at Saudi Arabia’s training site in the sweltering oil dictatorship, just the latest of thousands of desperate, working poor people who died needlessly to make a World Cup happen in the desert. Wahl’s moral outrage was vivid.

“They just don’t care,” he began his piece, focusing his rage, laser-like, on the blasé response from the head of Qatar’s host committee, who’d made comments like “death is a natural part of life” and “of course a worker died” when pressed about the incident by reporters. To Wahl, the episode again showed the “crassness” of a monarchy he’d already sharply criticized over its ethical failings, including its anti-LGBTQ policies. The rant stood out as an example of why Wahl, after two decades covering the sport, was considered the dean of U.S. soccer writers.

But it will also be remembered as the last thing Grant Wahl ever wrote.

As the clock struck midnight in Doha on Friday night, Wahl suddenly collapsed in his seat in the press box at the giant Lusail Stadium during the match between Argentina and the Netherlands, just as the contest was heading into extra time. Emergency workers tried to revive him and rushed him to a local hospital, but Wahl died. He was just 48.

Wahl’s death stunned the U.S. soccer community, including a generation of journalists who considered the pioneering writer a role model who was a kind and patient mentor, and his legion of readers who were so grateful for an American who could bring their passion for the world game to life. It also cast a gigantic pall over a World Cup that was already walking a tightrope between the joy of some remarkable upsets and individual performances and disgust with the greed that had placed this beloved event in the blood-soaked hands of Qatar’s corrupt rulers.

And it brought a flood of online conspiracy theorizing that the collapse of a seemingly healthy, not-yet-middle-aged journalist in a region of the world rife with human rights abuses and thuggish security forces might somehow be the result of foul play. Even Wahl’s brother raised that possibility in an online posting just hours after his death. After all, Wahl’s relentless criticism of his Qatari hosts had included an episode where he was briefly detained at a match by security forces for the offense of wearing a rainbow shirt in support of LGBTQ rights. This in a region responsible for the brutal murder of a U.S.-based journalist just four years ago.

» READ MORE: Why I watch the World Cup ... despite Qatar | Will Bunch Newsletter

The circumstances of Wahl’s death should be investigated fully, in cooperation with the wishes of his wife and family. But the theory known as Occam’s razor posits that the best explanation for an event is usually the simplest one, and — according to his own writings — Wahl was quite ill during much of his stay in Qatar. He said that at one point he’d visited a hospital in Doha and was given medication for a condition he believed to be bronchitis. Obviously, his condition was far worse — amid the around-the-clock stress of covering an every-four-years event like the World Cup — than either Wahl or his doctors realized.

It’s hard this weekend for me to stop thinking about both the magnitude of this loss and what it says about the fragility of life. I’ve been quite moved in reading what those who had the privilege of knowing and working with Wahl had to say about him — his kindness and decency, the friendship and guidance he gave to younger journalists whom someone with his stature could have easily blown off, and the respect for his bold stands on issues, even from folks who sometimes disagreed with him.

But I think even more significant is what he meant to the legion of American soccer fans — like me — who didn’t know Wahl but who desperately needed someone like him, an evangelist for the sport who understood its grace on the pitch but also the broader role that it plays in this crazy, mixed-up world. He gave an eloquent voice to a worldview that so many enthusiasts in a nation obsessed with that other football also feel, but struggle to express.

The ESPN analyst Sebastian Salazar, in a commentary this weekend, praised Wahl as the “moral backbone” of American soccer journalism, then added: “I think everyone who loves the sport in the United States has at some point felt like an outsider — you try to talk about soccer and the people around you don’t really get it — so when you find people who do get it and do love it, there’s a real connection there.”

So his loss leaves a real void. It also triggers the human desperation to explain something that simply cannot be explained. It’s no wonder that so many seek out conspiracy theories because somehow that is less frightening than the more likely possibility that a healthy 48-year-old man suddenly got sick and died. That said, I do think there are a couple of significant — albeit very different from each other — ways that we can learn from his too-short-yet-significant life.

The first is that all who love the sport of soccer — certainly those with the loudest voices such as officials, players, and the writers and commentators tasked with carrying on his legacy, but also the everyday fan — need to pick up the torch from Wahl. That means demanding so much more from a sport that, at its best, brings people together — yet gets needlessly dragged down by its worst, in the form of corruption or small-minded prejudice.

Wahl intuitively understood the things that are glazed over on the shallow, sold-to-the-highest-bidder TV broadcasts — that while the Messis and Ronaldos are the stars atop the soccer firmament, the human dignity of everyday people, including the laborers who were exploited to stage this World Cup in Qatar, remains the foundation. And he knew the world game wasn’t at its very best with an amazing bicycle kick, but rather when it uses its popularity as a platform for fighting racism or homophobia, instead of allowing it to fester.

The World Cup is coming to Wahl’s beloved United States (along with Canada and Mexico) in 2026, and I can think of no better tribute to his life and what he stood for than by tossing the remaining money-changers from soccer’s chronically corrupt governing body, FIFA; by making sure a bribery-driven process like the selection of Qatar never happens again; and by making the next World Cup a venue for free expression of the type that wasn’t allowed in a Persian Gulf dictatorship.

The other, different lesson from Wahl’s untimely passing is to both take some more concern for our own welfare, but also become more mindful about the health of the others around us. The likely — if unconfirmed — explanations for his death connect with the much larger public health emergency that has engulfed the planet since the end of 2019.

Wahl — married to the prominent physician and public health expert Celine Gounder, and an advocate for vaccines — nonetheless reportedly contracted COVID-19 in August. We don’t know (and may never know) if Wahl developed so-called long COVID. But we do know the early evidence is that COVID raises the risk of cardiovascular events such as stroke. The sportswriter’s death also comes as experts warn of a triple pandemic — not just resurgent COVID but steep rises in the flu and respiratory diseases like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

A quick glance at Sunday’s New York Times shows that U.S. cases of COVID-19 have spiked 53% in just the last two weeks (globally, 23%) while American deaths have risen 39%. Health officials in New York City — again an epicenter — advised residents to once more wear masks in indoor public places, a relatively painless way to slow the spread. Few will listen — convinced that the last remaining COVID fatalities are the old and infirm. Wahl’s death suggests the reality out there is more complicated, and that we need to show more concern. The constant thread in his journalism was that every human life mattered. We can start doing a lot more to make that a reality.

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