Grant Wahl, American Journalist Dies After Match

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Grant was a great ambassador for the sport here in the US. Really one of the good ones that promoted the sport and helped it grow.

He was very outspoken about this World Cup and was trying to report on the problems leading up to it. I really hope there was no foul play.

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According to his brother he had received threats on his life and the cause of death is supposed to be Bronchitis related :man_shrugging:

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Really insane and tragic. The coincidence of it is so hard to assess.

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I don’t think that the Qatar government would be that stupid to kill an American journalist on this big of a stage.
With that said, it is truly amazing at the lack of emergency infrastructure available in this situation. There was no defibrillator anywhere. Medics had to send him to the hospital in an Uber. It’s just amazing to me how Fifa didn’t have more hands into the emergency management needs of a global event… Especially in light of what happened at the Euros.

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Wouldn’t need to be the actual government for there to have been something sinister going on. Obviously that is just wild and unfounded speculation. All of it is.

But a healthy 48 year old, no matter the stress levels, dropping dead of bronchitis just a few days after a highly visible/viral critique of a very sensitive government is also very low likelihood.

I know nothing about Qatar, so maybe its my own biases assuming that because we know of some truly horrific actions taken by its neighbors in the very recent past, that they or an affiliate might do something similar… So, my apologies if I’m wildly off base here. I do hope we get some further confirmation and mostly its just a real tragedy and a real loss.

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He was only treated for bronchitis, more than likely the death was heart-related. Doesn’t mean that there wasn’t something sinister going on, but more believable dying from heart failure than bronchitis. Heck, we just lost a healthy 37-year-old cousin to an aneurysm.

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Yeah true.

And damn Chris, really sorry for your loss. That’s awful.

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Thanks buddy. Puts things in perspective that you aren’t guaranteed anything right?

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