The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is football’s greatest scandal. The tournament is built on a web of corruption, human rights abuse, and death which is against the game of football — a sport that claims to be all-inclusive. Behind the oestentatious football stadiums are the woes of the family of every migrant worker that has died to build the stadiums that matches will be played in.

Additionally, the nation’s lagging football culture hardly justifies organising such a prestigious tournament. The Guardian reported earlier this year that more than 6,500 workers had died, almost all on the building programme for 2022, and that this figure is likely an underestimate. Labourers, forced to work long hours in incredible heat with little to no protective equipment, have paid the ultimate price. In 2016, an Amnesty International report found that migrant workers were living in squalid conditions, going months without pay, being denied exit visas and having their passports confiscated, and had been deceived about the type of work on offer before going to Qatar. According to the charity, this is forced labour under international law — in other words, modern-day slavery.

This World Cup is also one of the many manifestations of corruption that has plagued FIFA for years. Assertions that Qatar won the World Cup dishonestly began less than a year after its allocation by a FIFA committee led by disgraced former President Sepp Blatter and Vice President Jack Warner, who alongside Chuck Blazer, may be some of the worst men in football.