Speaker Profile

Grant Wahl is one of the world’s leading soccer journalists. Comfortable writing long form and short form and appearing in front of the camera, Wahl joined Sports Illustrated in November 1996 as a reporter and was promoted to his current position of senior writer in October 2000. He began his journalism career as an intern with the Miami Herald in 1996.

Wahl has covered 10 World Cups (six men’s, four women’s) and five Olympics for SI. Some of his most notable stories include The World’s Team (about FC Barcelona) and lengthy stories on David Beckham, Alex Morgan, José Mourinho, Didier Drogba, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant.
Wahl first won critical praise for his work (with Jon Wertheim) on the 1998 cover story Where’s Daddy?, which documented the staggering number of out-of-wedlock children born to professional athletes. On his previous beat, covering college basketball, he won four Magazine Story of the Year awards given by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association.

When he isn’t traveling for SI, Wahl spends his time cooking, reading, rowing, watching movies and traveling with his wife, Celine. He is conversational in Spanish. Wahl, 45, grew up in Mission, Kansas, and attended Princeton University, where he graduated with a B.A. in politics in 1996. Wahl’s first book, The Beckham Experiment (Crown, 2009), was the first soccer book to become a New York Times bestseller. His second book, Masters of Modern Soccer (Crown, 2018) examines the craft of soccer, position by position.