Editor’s Note: Kartik Krishnaiyer’s Grant Wahl tribute remembers one of soccer’s most influential people for the sport in the United States.
Grant Wahl, a fixture on the American and global soccer scene, passed away suddenly on Friday. Wahl was 49 years old.
Wahl was no ordinary football writer. Rather, he was an institution in the game and a mentor to so many. Even more critical, arguably, was the role Wahl played in the growth of the game in the United States.
Wahl wrote about football for more than two decades for Sports Illustrated. He first came to my attention during the 1998 World Cup in France. Then his prose was unique among American writers on a mainstream platform at the time. This differed from many in the United States. Covering soccer, for them, was a degradation of traditional sports. It was a time traveler or a stepping stone to a mainstream sport.
Wahl embraced the culture and understanding of the sport in all its worldliness.
Through the years, Wahl’s impact grew. Eventually, he became the most visible and widely read writer on sports in the United States. By the time the mid-2000s rolled around, I was addicted to his columns. They were a window to the world of soccer. For me, football was a fan and Wahl gave me all the content he could want. It was the departure of a sport that was barely registered on the American scene.
A tribute to Grant Wahl
Wahl was such a talented and visible presence. He could have kept writing about college basketball. Or, he had the potential to break through in other, more prominent American sports. We cannot underestimate the impact of it on the growth of the game’s popularity. His current position in terms of visibility is much to the credit of Wahl’s determination.
In 2006 I started writing about football in a more serious way. The way Wahl used in writing him was my clearest model. His writing style gave context and background to a game that was foreign to most Americans. Soccer needed a special touch from the writers who were trying to sell the game to the masses.
Storytelling was his forte, and he reached new heights in his 2009 book, The Beckham Experiment. I praised that book for this website. It remains, to this day, a quintessential read in terms of storytelling and understanding of the trials and tribulations surrounding Major League Soccer at that time.
Wahl’s signature at this time conveyed seriousness to the reader. A story gained traction and importance if he was the writer assigned to it.
I jumped across the desk, so to speak, in 2010. The North American Soccer League (NASL) hired me as Director of Communications. I quickly realized the potential of getting Wahl to cover stories related to our league. It would be more than helpful to grow this upstart second division league.
writer’s reach
Those opportunities came along, maybe not quite as regularly as you’d hoped, but often enough. Wahl researched stories related to our league and teams. That started with a Tampa Bay Rowdies player playing for the Palestinian national team in 2011. It culminated, at least in my experience, with the announcement of Brazilian great Ronaldo buying a part of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. It was in this last story, in early 2015, that we felt the full impact of Wahl’s personality. He had started contributing to FOX Sports’ soccer coverage a few years earlier.
One of the challenges of giving national writers stories with a platform was that local reporters who work long hours for little pay, covering local teams, sometimes become resentful. But, in Wahl’s case, when you worked with him on a story, everyone in the game understood the magnitude of the platform he had.
As my role in the game evolved, I came across more people saying that Wahl was an inspiration or a mentor. He was someone who always made time to talk to a football writer or press officer, no matter how relatively inconsequential they were. He took the time to mentor an entire generation of young writers and was instrumental in helping revive a largely dormant professional organization, The North America Soccer Writers (NASR), of which I served as vice president from 2017 to 2019.
In addition, he was friends with many in the business. Three months ago, Neil Blackmon, one of my closest friends and partners in this business, lost his father. One of the first phone calls Neil received was from Grant Wahl, who was never too busy to spare a minute and a thought for a colleague.
A soccer pioneer
Grant was almost like a missionary for the beautiful game, spreading the gospel of a sport that was secondary or even unknown to most American sports fans. He sought out national news platforms and any other vehicle to talk about and promote the sport to a larger number of people who watched it regularly.
While breaking news was in his wheelhouse, as described above, most important to him were his efforts to promote the people and personalities around the game, as well as the culture, not only in the United States but in everyone, who fueled the passion for football.
speaking the truth
After leaving FOX Sports in 2019 and Sports Illustrated in 2020, Wahl’s voice arguably became even more important. As a freelancer, he became even more committed to telling stories and providing important context about a sport that was becoming increasingly questionable in its ethics and impact. Wahl was no stranger to the controversies surrounding FIFA, briefly considering a run for the organization’s presidency a decade earlier, in 2011. Wahl had criticized FIFA for years for its scandal and ethical lapses, but as As the World Cup in Qatar approached and the governance of the game became even more questionable, he sharpened his pencil and wrote many columns, setting off alarm bells on key issues surrounding the game.
In 2021 and 2022, writing on a substack platform, Wahl penned some of his most important pieces, effectively merging activism with a passion for sport. His last article, written the day before he passed away, discussed 2022 FIFA World Cup host Qatar’s shameful treatment of migrant workers from South Asia, and political efforts to silence the conversation. about.
It was a fitting tribute to Grant Wahl to end his career, as that piece reflected his deep sense of justice and his desire that beautiful play be just that. Beautiful once again.
PHOTO: IMAGO / Bildbyran
