Grant Wahl, an American soccer reporter who passed away last week while covering the World Cup in Qatar, suffered from a ruptured aortic aneurysm, according to his wife, Dr. Celine Gounder.
Longtime Sports Illustrated college basketball and soccer reporter Wahl, who also published his own newsletter, died after collapsing while covering Friday's Argentina-Netherlands game. He was 49.
"It's just one of these things that had been likely brewing for years, and for whatever reason, it happened at this point in time," Gounder said on "CBS Mornings."
In a longer statement, Gounder stated his death was caused by "the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium," according to an autopsy completed by the New York City Medical Examiner's Office.
"The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him," she added, noting that his death had nothing "nefarious" about it.
His body was brought to the United States for an autopsy on Monday, according to U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price.
Wahl had complained about feeling ill in the days leading up to his death.
"It had gotten pretty bad in terms of like the tightness in my chest, tightness, pressure. Feeling pretty hairy, bad," he told co-host Chris Wittyngham in an episode of the podcast Futbol with Grant Wahl published days before his death.
He continued by saying that he visited the World Cup media center clinic because he thought he had bronchitis.
In a newsletter that was released on Dec. 5, he went on to further detail the incident, indicating that his body "broke down" as a result of lack of sleep, high-stress levels, and a demanding workload. He claimed that after suffering from a cold for 10 days, it "turned into something more severe," and that he felt better after taking medication and getting some rest.
An aortic aneurysm is a balloon-like bulging in the aorta, the major artery that delivers blood from the heart to the chest, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An aneurysm ruptures when it totally bursts, resulting in internal bleeding.
According to the CDC, aortic aneurysms or dissections killed roughly 10,000 people in 2019. 59% of those killed were men.
Wahl has covered soccer for almost two decades, including 11 World Cups - six men's, five women's - and published multiple books on the sport, according to his website.
