Editor’s note: The original December 2022 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the reporting cited below, and added what was learned after his death. The original version was framed around Grant Wahl’s net worth. It put the figure at $5 million and said Forbes, Wikipedia and Business Insider had reported it, then gave a different figure, $1.5 million, further down the page. We found no Forbes report of his net worth and no credible outlet that has published one, so those figures have been removed. The original also gave his age as 48; The Associated Press reported he was 49. It also reported his brother’s suspicion of foul play; the brother later retracted it, as described below.
Grant Wahl, the American journalist who wrote for Sports Illustrated for more than two decades and helped grow the audience for soccer in the United States, died while covering the World Cup in Qatar. He was 49.
Wahl fell back in his seat in the section of Lusail Stadium reserved for journalists during extra time of the match between Argentina and the Netherlands, The Associated Press reported. Reporters next to him called for help. British journalist Keir Radnedge, who was working nearby, told the AP that emergency workers treated Wahl on site for 20 to 30 minutes before carrying him out on a stretcher.
The World Cup organizing committee said he was taken to Hamad General Hospital in Doha. It did not give a cause of death and said it was working with the U.S. Embassy to return his body according to his family’s wishes.
Illness in the days before
Earlier that week, Wahl had written on his website that he had been unwell. He said a cold had turned into something more severe, with pressure and discomfort in his upper chest, that he had tested negative for COVID-19, and that the clinic at the main media center told him he probably had bronchitis and gave him antibiotics and cough syrup, the AP reported.
Qatar was his eighth World Cup. The AP reported that Wahl wrote that security had refused him entry to the United States’ opening match against Wales on Nov. 21 and told him to remove a rainbow T-shirt he wore in support of LGBTQ rights. He wrote that he was held for 25 minutes before a security commander let him go, and he said FIFA apologized.
Twenty-five years at Sports Illustrated
Wahl graduated from Princeton in 1996 and worked for Sports Illustrated from 1996 to 2021, covering soccer and college basketball. Before he wrote only about soccer, he produced a 2002 cover story on LeBron James, then a high school junior in Akron, Ohio.
He also worked for Fox Sports from 2012 to 2019 and joined CBS Sports in 2021 as an analyst and editorial consultant. After leaving Sports Illustrated, he launched his own website, Fútbol with Grant Wahl, and a podcast with Meadowlark Media. He wrote two books: “The Beckham Experiment” (2009), about David Beckham’s move to the LA Galaxy, and “Masters of Modern Soccer” (2018).
In 2011, he attempted to run for FIFA president against Sepp Blatter and Mohamed bin Hammam, promising greater transparency. He said he contacted 150 countries but did not win support for a nomination.
The U.S. Soccer Federation said his passion for the game had helped drive interest in it, and FIFA president Gianni Infantino said his reporting would be missed. Wahl’s wife, Dr. Céline Gounder, a physician and CBS News contributor, wrote on Twitter that she was in complete shock. State Department spokesman Ned Price said American officials were in touch with Qatari authorities about his family’s wishes.
What happened next
Wahl’s body arrived in New York on Dec. 12, 2022, and was taken to the city’s medical examiner’s office. Two days later, Gounder said on “CBS Mornings” that the autopsy showed he died from the rupture of an aortic aneurysm, NBC News reported.
In a statement posted on Wahl’s Substack, she said the aneurysm, in the ascending aorta, had been growing slowly and had gone undetected, and that the chest pressure he felt shortly before his death may have been its first symptoms. She said CPR or defibrillation would not have saved him and that his death was unrelated to COVID or vaccination. “There was nothing nefarious about his death,” she wrote.
In the first days after his death, Wahl’s brother, Eric Wahl, had cast doubt on the illness explanation. NBC reported that he cited death threats Wahl had told him he received and said he had legitimate grounds for suspicion; AFP reported that he suggested Wahl had been killed. NBC reported that he retracted that suspicion after news of the initial examination of his brother’s body, and AFP said he reversed himself.
