The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is still seven years away, but this week brought the latest in a long line of indignities and injustices that already define it. Call it the cherry on top of a festering, rotten sundae that won't be served until the next decade.

Shady bidding process? Check. Atrocious working conditions that have led to scores of deaths of migrant workers building the mega-event's infrastructure? Check. And now, moving the event to an awkward — almost sacrilegious — time of year? Check, apparently.

Sports Illustrated soccer reporter Grant Wahl reported this week that it's a "done deal" that the 2022 World Cup will take place in November and December instead of its standard summer timeframe. FIFA brass are expected to make that move official at a meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, next month, according to Wahl.

Why the move? Because based on logistics alone, Qatar is not a country that should have ever been awarded a World Cup in the first place — temperatures there soar above 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. That is — if you're scoring at home — not conducive to playing soccer at the highest level (or doing much of anything at all outside). Previous patchwork fixes that had been floated included holding games at night, and building artificial clouds to station over stadiums to dim the sun's heat.

So here we are with a winter World Cup, which will disrupt the top club seasons (club teams, and not national ones, provide the overwhelming majority of top players' incomes). In the United States, it will also compete with the NFL, NBA, college basketball and college football for attention.

Any hope of having the 2022 World Cup moved — because the bidding process that awarded it to Qatar has long been tainted by the stench of alleged corruption — was effectively squashed in November when a FIFA-commissioned report determined no ethical wrongdoing in the bidding process. In the height of irony, however, the actual person who conducted the investigation resulting in that report resigned in protest following the announcement. FIFA declined to make his entire report public, instead releasing only a summary that he charged as being misleading, incomplete and ... unethical.

Meanwhile, workers building Qatar's World Cup infrastructure from scratch died at a rate of one every two days, according to The Guardian. A new law announced this month improved the plight of workers who don't die by the thinnest of margins — they'll now be paid at least once per month.

Cash rules everything around them

FIFA's president, Sepp Blatter. Image: Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press

The latest development reported by Wahl this week pales in comparison to human lives being lost building something that shouldn't exist in the first place. But it's all part of the same big mess.

Wahl's report was foreshadowed earlier this week, when FIFA announced in a surprise move that it would award Fox Sports broadcast rights to the 2026 World Cup. (Fox also owns the rights to 2018 and 2022, taking over from ESPN, whose run ended with the 2014 World Cup.)

FIFA awarded those 2026 rights without a bidding process that surely would have driven up their value — and before the event's host location that year is even known. Why would it do that? Most informed guesses say FIFA is making amends to Fox for moving the 2022 event to winter. The broadcasting giant bid on 2022 under the assumption that the tournament would be held in the summer months that bring more viewers, higher ratings and increased ad dollars.

The message there was clear, just as it was made clear by Wahl's subsequent report, and just as it's been made clear by FIFA time and time again: The organization's professed "claim" — For the Game. For the World. — is a total joke. For the money is more accurate. Tradition, logic and even human lives be damned.

The 2022 World Cup is such a fiasco that it's taken all eyes off of the 2018 tournament, set to be held in Russia. As President Vladimir Putin continues to bully neighboring Ukraine while provoking the rest of Europe, asking whether his country should even get to host the 2018 World Cup becomes increasingly valid.

The 2022 World Cup appears tarnished. The 2018 World Cup's dignity seems in peril. Perhaps the world's most glorious sporting event will regain its luster a long 11 years from now, in 2026. But unless the beautiful game's governing body is reformed from the top down, expecting more ugliness seems to be the logical thing for soccer fans to do.