Soccer is the world’s favorite sport, and its most prestigious international tournament, the World Cup, is taking place this summer – in Russia.

While there is a great deal of controversy over the prospect of a Russian World Cup, especially with the various international incidents that the host nation seems eager to cause, I would like to take a look to the World Cup of 2022, which will be hosted in Qatar.

The prospect of a Qatari World Cup is a testament to the bone-deep corruption of FIFA; allowing Qatar to host the World Cup is a logistical nightmare which involves immense expenditures for national soccer federations, to say nothing of the detestable human rights violations being committed.

Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup was selected by the FIFA Executive Committee in 2010; two of its members were suspended before the vote even began due to allegations of corruption regarding their votes. Qatar is the smallest nation to ever host a World Cup, and this will be the first World Cup they have the privilege of playing in – simply by virtue of being the host nation. Since their bid succeeded, there have been major shakeups in the executive echelon of soccer – the largest of which was long-serving FIFA President Sepp Blatter stepping down amidst an FBI investigation into his organization.

As it stands now, the 2022 World Cup is a logistical hassle just based on the location alone. When Qatar launched their bid in 2009, an evaluation report expressed concerns about the effect of the summer heat on players and spectators, with daytime temperatures reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.

FIFA’s brilliant solution to this?

Hold the World Cup in the winter, during November and December. The major problem with this is that the vast majority of domestic leagues, including the world’s top six leagues, are in full swing during the winter. Additionally, the UEFA Champions League, the world’s premier international club competition, also schedules matches from October to December.

National associations will have to rework their entire 2022-2023 season schedule around the World Cup, and clubs have already voiced their concerns about the prospective arrangements.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who represents 214 clubs in his capacity as the head of the European Club Association, warned that “The European clubs and leagues cannot be expected to bear the costs for such rescheduling. We expect the clubs to be compensated for the damage that a final decision would cause.”

But more important are the various and widespread accusations of human rights violations.

Qatar is currently spending billions of dollars on infrastructure and construction for eight new stadiums and has imported hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from India, Nepal and Bangladesh for their projects.

When they enter the country, they are immediately subject to the Qatari kafala system, a controversial set of laws that force migrant workers to obtain their employer’s permission to change jobs or leave the country.

This is not the first time that FIFA has had to deal with the kafala system. In 2013, French footballer Zahir Belounis was trapped in the Gulf nation for almost three years amidst a dispute over unpaid wages. He appealed to 2022 World Cup ambassadors Zinedine Zidane and Pep Guardiola, as well as to then-President Blatter, but received the same response: there was nothing they could do.

Trapped in Doha with his wife and daughter, and his bank account steadily running out, Belounis was reportedly contemplating suicide. Even so, he had a fairly substantial pool of resources to draw from to fund his family’s expenses, and he was eventually released.

But how much more severe must the plight of migrant workers trapped by this draconian system be?

A report by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) on the kafala system includes the perspective of a worker from the Philippines who says that “we are afraid to complain to the authorities. We see that workers who do complain are either blacklisted, deported or threatened. Our managers told us that workers who go on strike get deported within 12 hours.”

A further investigation from Human Rights Watch reveals that workers bound by the kafala system often live in squalid camps unfit even for housing animals, work all day in sweltering build sites that FIFA has deemed unsafe for players and spectators and often suffer both fraud and wage theft. The death toll so far across the country is estimated at 1,200 and is projected to rise to 4,000 by 2022.

Is this a justifiable cost to play a simple game?

FIFA – who is now very tellingly sponsored by the state-owned airline Qatar Airways – astonishingly only had this to say: “FIFA is in regular contact with the Qatar 2022 local organizing committee and the supreme committee for delivery & legacy handling matters relating to the 2022 FIFA World Cup.”

The sad truth is that this is only the beginning, the tip of the iceberg. Oil money is buying the soul of the beautiful game, and the depth of the corruption that we must combat will continue to reveal itself the closer we get to 2022.