​For Dr. Céline Gounder, clinical associate professor of medicine and infectious diseases at NYU Medical School and a medical correspondent for CBS News, this World Cup has landed with particular intensity. Her late husband, Grant Wahl, long recognized as the leading soccer journalist in the United States, died at the 2022 Qatar World Cup after collapsing while covering the quarterfinal between Argentina and the Netherlands. The medical examiner later determined that an undetected ascending aortic aneurysm was the cause of his death. Wahl was 49.
Gounder, who resides in New York City, believes Wahl would be writing, podcasting, and producing videos with great enthusiasm about the standout performances from stars like Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi, and Erling Haaland. He would have relished the stadiums packed with fans and the global mingling that this World Cup has fostered—moments like Scotland’s Tartan Army and Japanese visitors sampling Texas barbecue for the first time, illustrating everything Wahl adored about the world’s most popular sport. Yet he would also have kept a sharp eye on those in power, particularly after FIFA’s reversal of a suspension earlier this week of American striker Folarin Balogun, following a phone call between FIFA president Gianni Infantino and U.S. President Donald Trump.
“It feels like there is a Grant-sized hole in the world right now,” Gounder says. “Because I know he would be going apesh-t on this.”
The controversy has not been limited to the pitch. The Somali referee who was denied a visa into the United States, the Iranian team’s treatment during their World Cup stay, and the uneasy alignment between European officials and others who criticized the perceived closeness between Trump and Infantino—who awarded Trump an informal peace prize at the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C., last December—are all stories Wahl would have pursued with his characteristic blend of geopolitical scrutiny and field-level reporting. Even as he followed the action on the ground, Wahl would have kept his critical eye trained on power and influence, confident in his ability to dissect the forces shaping the sport he loved.
Throughout his career, Wahl walked a careful line: he celebrated soccer’s beauty and growth, especially in the United States, without ever becoming a mere booster. “Part of his aversion to ‘stick to sports’ was that the phrase implies sports are somehow lesser,” Gounder notes. “To him, sports were just as serious a journalistic beat as any other.”
This World Cup was supposed to be Wahl’s crowning moment—a culmination of a career that helped propel the growth of men’s and women’s soccer in the United States. His first World Cup as a journalist was in France in 1998, when soccer felt almost like an afterthought to many editors. Wahl, at 24, covered the France–Brazil match for Sports Illustrated, seizing a beat that many peers had overlooked. He embraced the then-nascent digital-media era, blending insider knowledge with a substantial online following while continuing to craft long-form soccer features that offered depth in an era of evolving search engine optimization. If he had lived to see this World Cup, he would have brought his particular blend of reverence for the game and fearless scrutiny to every story—from the mesmerizing on-field artistry to the unintended political undertows that so often shape the global game.