The first moment I can recall spending quality time with Grant Wahl outside of a pressbox, press conference or some other soccer workplace was at a steakhouse in Columbus.
A large chunk of the North American soccer media world had flocked to central Ohio for another massive World Cup qualifier between the US men’s national team and Mexico. About a year prior, after many years as a side hustle, I had taken the plunge into full-time soccer writing and editing, and at that point the question of whether it would prove sustainable was, let’s say, still very much up in the air.
USMNT-Mexico WCQs, especially those epic ones in Columbus, were, and to a large extent still are, tentpole occasions. So I made sure I was there in person for that one, writing for as many different outlets as I could convince to pay me. Grant took notice and invited me to a casual mid-sized (we were a 10- to 15-top, I’m guessing?) dinner he and other industry luminaries like Ian Darke and Alexi Lalas got together that week.
It wasn’t super-fancy, but it was a nice place, and the menu was a tad bit north of my pay grade at the time. I figured that part out, though, and felt glad I attended. I met several interesting people and everyone was polite and kind and quite normal, and it gave me heart that I would eventually find a way forward in the profession as they had.
That night I learned to my amusement that at such gatherings Alexi has an occasional habit of standing up, pointing at a few others scattered around the table and asking them to pick up their plate or glass and join him in switching seats to a different, random spot among the conversations unfolding around the meal. In retrospect, I realize this had to have been a nightmare for the wait staff. But the idea was to mix it up, maybe encounter some new people or learn something new, so I got up and migrated. Grant, too, participated with a ready grin.
As most readers can imagine, that was just Grant’s kind of party. He maintained an inquisitive curiosity right up to the end, even after decades of near-constant ascent in an extremely, self-consciously intense line of work. And like so many others have testified over the past few days, the simple act of including me and some of that Columbus evening’s other lesser-known lights was just another good example of who he was, and the legacy he leaves after his sudden, searing and decidedly untimely passing in Qatar on Friday at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. He was 49.
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Of course that legacy has manifested itself in the relentless flow of moving tributes, eulogies and remembrances since his death went public. Even now, seven paragraphs in, I’m not sure how much mine really has to offer by comparison; I’m proud to say I became friends with Grant, albeit just one small star in his sprawling constellation of soccer relationships. It’s worth trying, though, because Wahl’s influence on this sport, this industry and this league is so profound.
I was lucky enough to have been covering D.C. United way back in 2007, when David Beckham made his MLS debut with the LA Galaxy on an intra-conference visit to gloriously decaying old RFK Stadium. Grant was there too, of course, gathering the material that would eventually make “The Beckham Experiment” a New York Times best-seller and one of the definitive North American soccer books of all time.
In a pregame press conference so much better-attended than usual that it had to be relocated to RFK’s subterranean batting cages, it was fascinating to witness Beckham’s wry annoyance at the bald American asking probing questions, the one who dared to write an “unauthorized” (which in Becks’ world meant one he wasn’t a collaborator on) book about him. I feel safe in guessing Wahl’s wild tale of the chaos that swirled around the arrival of MLS’s first modern megastar was mostly a headache for league leaders at the time. But it also quite literally put MLS on the map.
In writing that book, Grant – who had already established himself as a leading news-breaker around the league – took MLS seriously enough to devote years of research and attention to it, to make it the backdrop for a frank, engaging, even slightly lurid tale about soccer, celebrity and the power dynamics behind their long-awaited confluence on this continent’s sporting landscape.
He was comfortable and adept enough to acknowledge that the story’s ending remained unwritten. And it turned out to be a happy one for all, considering the multitude of hardware Beckham and the Galaxy eventually won (though real ones know Mike Magee deserves most of the credit there). And the leaps and bounds by which MLS grew (and continues to grow) in the Designated Player era. That ownership stake Becks happily made use of and continues to tend down in Miami. And the proof of concept Wahl’s work gave him, and the rest of us, for the actual existence of an honest-to-goodness soccer media marketplace here.
At some point in the wake of “The Beckham Experiment,” MLS marked a vital milestone of maturity. It ceased to be regarded as an expensive charity case by the outside world, and started to fulfill its mission as the top division of professional soccer in the U.S. and Canada, warts and all. Standards and expectations rose; more and better were demanded. Grant deserves credit there, and as the Extratime crew discussed in Monday’s show, that and the “MLS Ambition Rankings” he conceived and cultivated for nearly a decade are a triumphant inheritance just in and of themselves.
Quantifying and ranking something as subjective as “ambition” was a huge swing, one perhaps only Grant had both the reach and platform to take. And as much as club executives surely winced at seeing themselves evaluated this way – the sum of their organizational existence boiled down into a bracing paragraph or two – it quickly became a much-anticipated annual event around the league, stoking many, many hours of lively discourse both on and offline. It helped make MLS matter in a new way, even, maybe even especially, to those on the inside.
Part of this came from SI’s august reputation, to be sure, but Grant had a way of bestowing gravitas on the subjects he wrote about. That helped him become the definitive voice on so many of them, one whose work so readily became part of the historical record of whatever person or team or event or occasion was in the spotlight. I was reminded of this when an MLSsocccer.com colleague reached out this week to share their favorite memory of Grant and his work.
It was a 2005 SI piece on the intensity of the US-Mexico rivalry titled “Yes, Hard Feelings,” published the week of another harrowing Hexagonal trip to Estadio Azteca for the USMNT, that stuck in this colleague’s mind. In their words:
“I was about 12 at the time, obsessed with soccer and just starting to get into reading true sports writing. My dad had an SI subscription, and I found that article inside and remember being awestruck that soccer, especially American soccer, could be written about with that amount of care, detail and storytelling.
“At the time, as best as I could tell in my young age, soccer in American sports media was treated as a passing thought at best and a joke at worst. Grant opened up a world of context, both culturally and historically, that made the game feel important, and that in turn changed the way I viewed my favorite sport, and myself, in the American sports landscape. No longer on the outside looking in, Grant made me feel like soccer was a part of the club.”
That’s a pretty apt way of putting it. Wahl’s career traversed a time of striking growth and evolution in North American soccer. His work both reflected and amplified that, while never losing an important sense of accountability. Wherever the future takes us, I hope those of us who watch, write, talk and think about this league never, ever forget the value of all that.