One of America’s leading soccer reporters, who made headlines when he was detained at the Qatar World Cup for wearing a rainbow shirt, has d#ed on Friday while covering the quarterfinals in Doha, according to his wife and the US Soccer federation.
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According to NPR, Wahl, 48, collapsed in the press tribune as Friday’s Argentina-Netherlands match was winding down. Paramedics performed CPR at the scene before taking him away on a stretcher. The Wall Street Journal said Wahl apparently suffered a heart att@ck.
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“Grant made soccer his life’s work, and we are devastated that he and his brilliant writing will no longer be with us,” US Soccer said in a statement. It said the “entire US Soccer family is heartbroken.” Wahl’s wife Celine Gounder, a renowned epidemiologist and expert on infectious diseases, tweeted: “I’m in complete shock.”
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Mr Wahl said in a tweet on November 21 that he was briefly detained by security staff when he tried to enter a World Cup stadium in Qatar while wearing a rainbow shirt in support of the LGBTQ community. He said he had refused to remove the shirt. Same-s#x relations are illegal in Qatar.
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Wahl said on his subscription newsletter earlier this week that he’d gone to a clinic at the media centre in Qatar, “and they said I probably have bronchitis.”
“My body finally broke down on me. Three weeks of little sleep, high stress and lots of work can do that to you… I could feel my upper chest take on a new level of pressure and discomfort,” he wrote.
May God help him