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Interview with Grant Wahl, Part I: World Cup Picks, Soccer in America, and more

By on June 6, 2014

Grant Wahl strolled up to the press entrance at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park with another of Sports Illustrated’s soccer writers. It would be a stretch to expect many people outside of the media community to recognize Wahl’s colleague on sight, but for Grant Wahl, fans were even stopping to request photos with him as if he were a member of the US team himself.  Then again, Wahl has nearly 350,000 followers on Twitter, more than USMNT captain Clint Dempsey and literally tenfold the followers of most players on the US’ 23-man squad about to head to Brazil for the World Cup.  So it is no stretch to say that the man I was about to sit down with is the leading soccer journalist in the United States.

And if you are looking for a reason why, look no further than his mesmerizing description of the World Cup:

“For me the World Cup is the best sporting event in the World, and I’ve covered the Olympics and I’ve covered the NCAA Basketball Tournament. But the World Cup makes this world seem smaller, and everyone’s eyeballs are on the same thing at the same time, as opposed to the Olympics where there are so many different sports. It feels like you are uniting everyone on the planet.”

Wahl has covered seven World Cups for Sports Illustrated (four Men’s and three Women’s), four Olympics, and is a journalist who you can always find in the press box at the biggest tournament matches.  He has conduced countless one-on-one interviews with some of the best players in the world, including David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Landon Donovan, and Luis Suarez.  He predicted in Sports Illustrated that France, who had never before won a World Cup, would win the 1998 tournament, what he says was his “best prediction ever.”  And this is not a man short of bold opinions: “I’m picking Argentina over Brazil in the final,” Wahl said. “I did get Spain right (to win the 2010 tournament), but everyone thought Spain was very good. So we’ll see if it happens for Argentina this time.”

However, it’s not Argentina whom Wahl will be following around Brazil this summer. Instead, it is the US national team.  Wahl is confident that even though the US are likely to be knocked out of the tournament in Group G, broadly considered the “Group of Death,” the well-televised World Cup will do great things for US soccer.

“I think it really helps soccer in the United States if the US does well in the World Cup; the longer the US can stay in the tournament it helps, I think, create new fans,” Wahl said.  “Every four years now I’m seeing so many new soccer fans created in the US by a World Cup, and then they want to learn more about the sport, so they’ll check out the Champions League, and the Premier League, and MLS, and those are the big things that move the sport forward.”

Whether the US will do well this summer, is an entirely different matter. Faced with Portugal, Ghana, and Germany, in the group stage, Wahl admitted that he thinks, along with many fans and journalists alike, that coach Jurgen Klinsmann was already looking toward the 2018 World Cup with his squad selection for Brazil.  Asked what he thinks, Wahl was quick to answer:

“My sense is that he is looking a bit toward 2018 with his roster selection. I feel like if Klinsmann had not already had a contract through 2018 that he would not have picked that exact same 23 players, but at the same time I think you look at the players that Klinsmann did pick, and I think that he does want to win in 2014 and it’s not just about 2018. So I think you have to look at it in both those ways, and, they have a difficult group; we’ll see how the US does down in Brazil.”

And on top of all that, the US national program has, in Wahl’s view, been hurt by the fact that two of its best players, captain Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley, recently made surprise moves back home to the US from top clubs in Europe. Wahl said of the moves: “I think it’s a bit difficult for the national team because Klinsmann wants his players to play at the highest level possible, and at this point, if you can play in the Champions League in Europe, that’s better than playing in (the) MLS. I don’t think that’s necessarily to say that Michael Bredley won’t still be a very good player at the World Cup just because he’s playing in MLS, you saw how Landon Donovan played in 2010 at the World Cup, he did quite well, and he was playing in MLS almost entirely before that.”

But that doesn’t mean that the US won’t provide entertainment; watching them face Ghana, who have knocked them out of the past two World Cup’s, has Wahl’s mouth watering. I asked him which US match he was most looking forward to, and he named the Ghana-US match without doubt:

“The Ghana game I think just because I think it’s so important to win that game and get 3 points, and if they don’t I think it’s going to be really hard to advance from the group. And there’s such a history with Ghana having eliminated the US the last two times – for me it’s hard to believe the US would lose to them in three straight World Cups, because I don’t think there’s a big difference between the talent and quality of the two teams. So we’ll see, but all three group games have these great story-lines, and tremendous players.”

“With Portugal you’ve got Cristiano Ronaldo, best player in the world over the last year, with Germany you’ve got Klinsmann having coached and played for Germany, you’ve got so many German-American players on the US team, so I’m excited for all of them, but I can’t wait to get down to Brazil.”

And, like the rest of us, Wahl is also filled with anticipation ahead of the tournament:

“I’m just really excited to see how the tournament plays out; I think a lot of different teams have the capability of winning the World Cup,” Wahl said. “I think there is going to be a lot of great stories, as there are with every World Cup, even with the teams that may not win it. I’m excited to see how the US does in a very difficult group.”

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.