For the longest time, ‘Who is the greatest footballer of all time?’ was the most popular debate in the ethers of football. Was it Cristiano Ronaldo or was it Lionel Messi? Throw in Pelé and Maradona into the mix and the parameters for discussion becomes unquantifiable – the need to frame the past in today’s standards, the quality variation across different leagues in different times and the quality of their teammates (poorer teammates needs a greater maverick). The debate becomes almost pointless as it launches into hypothetical space.

Why do we care about who is the greatest?

And as we edged closer and closer to the final on Sunday, the main narrative was, ‘If Lionel Messi wins this, surely he is the greatest footballer of all time. Surely. It would be put to bed once and for all.’ For he would have won everything for club and country. For he would have equal and perhaps surpassed Maradona’s achievements. Cristiano at the age of 37 surely had his last World Cup and wouldn’t be able to emulate Argentinian maestro anymore. Messi was on the brink of immortality.

For and against, arguable every football fan was invested in this. And as Argentina went 2-0 up against France in 36 minutes out of 90, we felt the we could finally put a full stop on the troublesome and tiring discussion. We can have closure. And so does Messi.

And in a way, it fits into the prism on how we see things these days. A movie is either good or bad. Once a person is outed as doing something wrong or deemed not socially appropriate, the person is ‘cancelled’ with no way back. The iPhone must be better than Android because it just is. We want the best places and the best things. There is hardly room for in between, to navigate between the two extremes, to contextualise and to accept that there are caveats and asterisks. To give room for healthy discussion and growth. All is for certain and nothing is in doubt.

Life is already full of it. Why the need to put anything not directly affecting our lives into the grey? We wouldn’t need to ask if the sun shines this Thursday, if we are going to get that job, when the world is going to end or if God exist, because we already know.

And wouldn’t that be nice? Argentinian fans sure wished they knew when France suddenly brought the score to 2-2. Dreams of elation and closure all but evaporated. What was going to happen?

It shouldn’t be this way. Life says that if we work hard enough to make it happen, it would happen. And surely at the fifth time of asking, of being asked to carry the hope of a nation, to emulate another footballing deity and to bend football to his will, Messi can finally get the crowning glory after 20 years. He has already won everything and was only missing the final elusive piece, the World Cup.

At 2-2, it looked like it wasn’t meant to be. Even as Messi score again, France came back to bring it to 3-3 after a handball from Gonzalo Montiel and Mbappe scoring the penalty. And in that moment, the world related to Messi. We have all been in situations where we hoped for the best and it didn’t work out. As Joe Devine from Tifo Football puts it, “it’s something as simple as you know you have a romantic interest in, something with someone, you go on a date, you think it’s gone really well turns out it hasn’t, they don’t like you, they in fact hate you and they wish you were dead, you know those sort of things.’

So in some respects, perhaps it’s fitting if Messi don’t get the World Cup because life is not a fairy tale. Art imitates life.

But perhaps the suffering is necessary to taste a sweeter victory. That life is a process of trial and error. If at first we don’t succeed, try again. If at second you don’t succeed, try again. The third, the fourth, the fifth. You learn from your mistakes in each one and recalibrate yourself. Each marginal improvement leading to something better, something grander.

And that there is wonder in wandering, to grow in unwavering faith in the divine. The love we have for others is only great because we don’t know for sure that they will love us back. That there is profound joy in unearthing the quirkiness and beauty from your spouse each day. To love those around us even more as they love us through the nadir.

And as great as we are, no achievement is a product of only one person. All achievements are a sum of those the came before, those around the achiever and the person himself.

And maybe that’s why Messi won in the end. The team changed over the 20 years. With his talent ever effervescent, the pieces got put together. The manager changed and the support multipled. His wife and children by his side. The team giving all their all to help country and Messi achieve the ultimate sporting dream. It wasn’t Messi that scored the last decisive penalty. It was Gonzalo Montiel, his humble teammate, the guy that was responsible for the handball. The left-footed genius did need a little help after all.

Maybe we care about who is the greatest because it’s a great story to get behind, to see someone who persisted and suffered so much to finally come out of on top at the very end. It gives us hope that at the end of it all, we ourselves can make it. That in spite of the circumstances we find ourselves in, we can make the best life we can. That in the strangest of ways, we can emulate Messi.

It’s a fitting end to a remarkable career. What a player. What a story. For the rest of us, there is hope just yet.

“Do you have more pounds in the bank or more Instagram followers?”

Cristiano Ronaldo ponders seriously for a second, then smirks and responds half jokingly, “It’s a good question. Probably similar. I don’t know. Probably similar.”

Last I checked, the man has 506 million followers. That’s a lot of followers. And a lot of pounds.

It may seem like a lot but I should add the caveat for those who are not familiar with football is that he was arguably one of the best players in the world alongside Lionel Messi. What is that old adage? Never do something that you are good at for free. He may or may not have half a billion pounds but he’s certainly a very wealthy individual. Sponsorships, endorsements, modelling and his actual salary all contributing to an overflowing portfolio.

People might balk at the amount but he works hard for it. You don’t get to the top by being lazy. Even at age 37, he remains an elite athlete and that’s a testament of his talent, training and competitiveness. He is still very much sought after and recently news emerged that Saudi Arabia wanted him for 350 million euros.

Some might question, ‘should footballers be paid that much?’ but no one forced clubs and owners to pay that much. The market decided that it is the right amount. Getting a famous footballer means more eyeballs on their televised matches, more shirt sales, better sponsors and of course, improvement to the team itself. Before you know it, 350 million is recouped and reinvested into recruiting other players and the cycle continues. It is all a calculated investment.

Football is a lucrative industry and we are partially contributors to this. Football is supplied because there’s a high demand for it. The World Cup is arguably the most famous sports tournament of all time. There is nothing quite like it. The English Premier League attracts a few billion viewers each season. When I was younger, I used to buy an Arsenal jersey every season even if they cost about 100 dollars. Some days, I stayed up till 2am to watch them play. After university, a lot of working professionals live that grandpa and grandma life in which they go to bed at 9am and wake up at 6am. Well, football will pull you out from that.

Such is the appeal. Such is the stronghold.

As lucrative as football is, it does not translate across the whole industry. It is very much a pyramidal structure and those at the bottom barely get anything. The FIFA 2022 Qatar World Cup shed a light on that, on how migrant workers are absolutely getting the short end of the stick as they are tied down by the kafala system.

Kafala is a system that is practiced by some companies and individuals in the Gulf states. The first iteration of Kafala can be traced back to Sir Charles Dalrymple Belgrave who was protecting British interest in Bahrain during the period of 1926 to 1957 and was effectively the island’s chief executive and first prime minister. Kafala meaning sponsorship, is a system whereby local individual or companies bear responsibility for the foreign workers. In return, the companies pay for travel expenses and accommodation. I say sponsor but the company effectively seem to ‘own’ the workers. It started as a way to control migrant workers in the pearling industry, but it grew to become a complex legal process compounded by nationalism and state-building.

Some workers have to take up debt to travel their way to the Gulf and they often stay in cramped and tight quarters. The renewal and termination of their visas is completely at the behest of the sponsors. Workers cannot change jobs without the permission of the employers. If you leave without permission, it is an offense that may result in beating, imprisonment or deportation, even with legitimate and substantial reasons such as abuse and mistreatment. In the cases of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, workers can’t even leave the country without permission. The worst part is the sponsors have so much power over the workers that they are forced to work under very harsh conditions and temperatures, sometimes as high as 50 degrees.

Some of these workers earn less in a month than the cost of a standard hotel room for a night in Qatar. The even sadder reality is that workers from South Asia and Africa chose to work in these conditions because it still pays higher than their salaries back home.

Due to the harsh conditions and mistreatment, it was reported that at least 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded, not necessarily from building the stadiums themselves but also roads, airport, hotels and a new city. The Secretary General of the Qatar World Cup Organising Committee clarified in a recent interview that the deaths related to the building of stadiums is not 6,500 but 400 and that he’s not in control of everything else that happened with other private companies. When asked if 400 is too big a price to pay, he responded, ‘One death is a death too many’.

I should say that this is not unique to Qatar only. China with the 2008 Olympics and Russia with the 2018 World Cup also had lots of human right issues that were not as scrutinised, probably because those countries do not have same level of access or openness when it comes to investigative journalism. And Kafala isn’t just in Qatar but in all the Gulf States except Iraq.

But regardless of precedence and commonality, the situation isn’t right and football just shone a spotlight on it. And for the first time, I find myself wondering if I should watch this World Cup. And it’s not because I got it all figured out and that boycotting it is the best option to do. It is because I haven’t figured it out and having trouble to rectify and connect all of this. I’m not the biggest football fan in the world but it’s one of my fondest ways of escapism and I trust it is for many others too. We shouldn’t have to struggle with the question of watching a sports tournament. We shouldn’t have to deal with sports washing, human rights issues and corruption.

Many people are able to compartmentalise the issues and focus on the game instead. Many people tried to ignore it. And I can understand. Football at its best takes us away to another reality for 90 minutes, to escape, to be passionate and to just be. And now, the game is used as a totem to represent life and morality issues, looming over the spectacles taking place. But I would argue we shouldn’t run away from this and that it is okay to grasp with these questions. We can afford to.

Just as football evolved from route one to possession based and counter pressing, from man-marking to zonal marking, from getting the ball to feet to getting the ball to space, so must we as football fans evolve and take this on. So must the players and the managers.

When Ronaldo was asked in the same interview ‘Do you think all the morality, debates and stuff; should that be left aside for now?’ He responded ‘100%’ and mentioned the debate should have been held before awarding the tournament to Qatar. He added that all the people and national teams should concentrate on the competition.

These are all valid points. It’s water under the bridge now. What can we really do? Focus on the games. Enjoy the tournament. But I wished he said more for the cause because for someone of his influence and standing, his words go a long way to add fuel to the fight for human rights and to increase awareness. He can afford the time to say a few things on it.

This would also make Saudi Arabia, one of the countries that has the Kafala system sit up and pay attention. After all, they want to pay 350 million euros for Ronaldo to come. Could 10 million not be taken off that amount and redistributed to the migrant workers, to improve oversight of the sponsors and to increase the resources to better manage and protect the workers? They can afford to.

As fans, we are the foundation of football. Investors buy football clubs because people pay to watch the matches. Players have a reason to play because fans are supporting them. Without fans, football becomes soulless, joyous and carried out for the sake of it. At the core of football experience is the shared joy between people in victories and the shared consolation in defeat. We have the power to change things for the better. And we have shown that. Qatar is said to abolish or at least introduce reforms to improve working conditions. If anything were to come out of this World Cup, at least there will be this legacy. But we shouldn’t stop there.

Football often brushes against political powers, discrimination, racism, injustice and various other issues. And for the period they brush against each other, football will shine a spotlight brighter than any star. Let’s make that time count. Let’s keep ourselves informed and speak out against these injustices. We can do our research and discern what best to do.

When we were young, the best time of our lives was to play football. And the funny thing was it didn’t have to be a football. It could be a crumpled piece of paper or a plastic bottle. And it didn’t have to be on grass. It could be a hard surface or sand. As long as there was something to kick on somewhere with space, football was there.

Life isn’t as simple as that anymore. We get older. We have jobs, mortgages and families. We have our baggage. And when we watch football, the last thing we want to worry about are these political issues. We yearn for the simplicity of halcyon days. But that’s part of life. It’s time we grow up together. Caring about it will help others and protect the integrity of the sport to be passed on to the next generation, to our children. So that they too can enjoy the simple things. To enjoy football the way we once did, and every once in a while, still do.

We can afford to. Let’s fight for it.