It has been a few days, and the shock of death’s suddenness has worn off, a bit. But the grief throughout the soccer community, and particularly that of the American soccer community, won’t subside easily after the sudden passing of Grant Wahl on Friday as he was covering a World Cup match in Qatar.

In the wake of Wahl’s death at the age of 48, multiple colleagues and friends have written tributes to him and to his work, through 24 years at Sports Illustrated and the last 2½ years on his own Substack platform. At “Fútbol With Grant Wahl,” he was the go-to source for what was happening with the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams but would also write and podcast about the game globally – and, occasionally, would offer a whimsical piece or an interview with one of the stars of “Ted Lasso,” as someone who was in on the joke from the outset.

He touched a lot of people, including some you might not expect. Among those offering reflections over the weekend was LeBron James, because in February of 2002, before Wahl took over Sports Illustrated’s soccer beat, he did the first major profile on the young LeBron as a high school superstar at St. Vincent-St. Mary High in Akron, Ohio. The title that accompanied the cover photo: “The Chosen One.”

You had a huge impact on me and my family and I’m so appreciative of you. A great person and journalist. Rest In Paradise Grant Wahl. https://t.co/rvFDGEA9fz

— LeBron James (@KingJames) December 10, 2022

But most of the tributes and reflections have come from people who knew him or interacted with him on the soccer beat. They offered glimpses of his humanity, describing a guy who was thoughtful of others, free with advice and encouragement and was a passionate advocate of The Beautiful Game without being condescending or a snob about it.

Author and journalist Molly Knight put it this way on her own Substack platform: “Every time one of your American friends had a lightbulb moment about how great soccer truly is, you were never dismissive like, ‘Duh. What took you so long?’ You were just giddy that someone else saw that light and was eager to join your congregation, as you were America’s high priest of soccer. I am sitting here typing my eulogy to you while wearing the Angel City sweatshirt I bought that night because YOU got me into soccer. None of it feels real.”

Wahl owned the beat at SI, and along the way, he wrote the definitive account of David Beckham’s arrival on these shores with the L.A. Galaxy and the transformation and tensions that followed in his 2009 book, “The Beckham Experiment.”

I didn’t know him to talk to, which means I missed out. We were in the same place at the same time occasionally for men’s or women’s national team games or training sessions in Carson, or maybe important Galaxy or LAFC matches, and we were both part of the Zoom sessions that U.S. Soccer frequently uses as interview opportunities before important national team events. (His questions were better than mine, for sure.)

But I knew him from his work. I subscribed to his Substack platform early in 2021 because this was an opportunity to keep up with the men’s national team through CONCACAF qualifying and beyond.

I came for the soccer information and stayed for the righteous indignation. Wahl was joyously passionate about the sport and the people who played it. But he understood the graft and double-dealing and corruption that has historically been a part of the sport, and he pulled no punches in writing about it. And he was one of the early and vocal supporters of the effort to get equal pay and treatment for the U.S. women’s team, which has finally come to pass.

In 2011, he even launched a quixotic campaign to run against Sepp Blatter for FIFA president. He had no chance, of course. He was too honest.

How much so? It got him fired from Sports Illustrated in 2020, when he publicly criticized the magazine’s new owners, Maven, for an additional round of layoffs at the beginning of the pandemic after having let 40 staffers go the previous fall.

1) I told Maven I was fine taking a 30% pay cut during the pandemic. But it was shameful to try to push through a permanent 30% cut beyond the pandemic.
2) My base salary was far below that, but I got a bonus because my bosses said my work was very good.
3) I write frequently. https://t.co/Q5BvV2CTeg

— Subscribe to GrantWahl.com (@GrantWahl) April 10, 2020

That led him to go into business for himself. I’m not sure how many paid subscriptions he had, but with his journalistic stature it was enough to get him credentialed to his eighth World Cup.

Along the way, he was critical of the process that delivered the World Cup to a tiny country in the Middle East that had plenty of petrodollars but no infrastructure, and oh, by the way, was not what you could call enlightened regarding human rights.

He got in trouble with the locals twice during this World Cup. Shortly after arriving to pick up his credential at the media center, he saw a slogan on the wall and took a photo with his phone, and a security guard came over and told him to delete it.

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“I looked at him,” Wahl wrote. “He looked at me. We were quiet for a few seconds. And then he walked away.”

And no, he didn’t delete the photo. To the contrary, he included it in that day’s dispatch.

A few days later, security guards detained him at a stadium gate for nearly a half hour because he was wearing a rainbow soccer ball t-shirt, an outgrowth of Qatar’s hypersensitivity to anything that might involve the LBGTQ community. They demanded he take the shirt off. He refused. Finally, they let him in, and he wrote about that, too.

And then there was the explosive BBC interview last week, which I mentioned in Saturday morning’s notes column, in which the CEO of the organizing committee, Nasser Al-Khater, seemed to shrug off another death of a migrant worker. Wahl wrote about it, of course, and the first words of his dispatch were as powerful as they were spare: “They just don’t care.”

To the end, he spoke truth to power. Rest in peace, Grant, and God bless you.

You cared.

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