Grant Wahl was one of the world’ s leading soccer journalists and the author of two previous books, Masters of Modern Soccer and the New York Times bestseller The Beckham Experiment. He created and hosted the Fú tbol with Grant Wahl website and podcast after spending twenty-five years at Sports Illustrated, where he wrote more than three dozen cover stories. Wahl covered thirteen World Cups (eight men’ s, five women’ s), seven Olympics and 10 Final Fours. He was posthumously inducted into the U. S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame and awarded the National Soccer Hall of Fame’ s Colin Jose Award for contributions to the American game. Grant Wahl died in 2022, and is survived by his widow Dr. Cé line Gounder.
Dr. Cé line Gounder is an internationally renowned internist, infectious disease specialist, and epidemiologist. In addition to serving as a clinical associate professor of medicine and infectious diseases at New York University, she cares for patients at New York’ s Bellevue Hospital Center and works as a podcaster and as a journalist and commentator for CBS News and the KFF. Her specialties include all kinds of epidemics, from Covid, Ebola, and opioid overdose, to mental health, gun violence, and disinformation. She and Grant Wahl were married in 2001.
Mark Mravic was an editor at Sports Illustrated for more than two decades. He worked closely with Grant Wahl on coverage of international and domestic soccer and in pushing for soccer’ s integration into the American sports mainstream, and served as editor for Wahl’ s Substack site from its launch in 2021. He lives in Noank, Connecticut.
Alexander Wolff spent 36 years on the staff of Sports Illustrated, overlapping with Grant Wahl for two decades. He is a former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton and the author of many books, including Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure and Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home. The editor of the Library of America collection Basketball: Great Writing About America’ s Game, he lives in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.
