“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.