Gianni Infantino, who grew up one Swiss town away from his infamous predecessor as Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, seems to be equally prone to silly or unworkable ideas.

(We can only hope he does not prove as venal.)

Infantino campaigned for the presidency earlier this year on a platform that called for the World Cup to expand from 32 to 40 teams, and today said he would like to consider 48 teams for the 2026 World Cup, wherever it lands.

One of those ideas is silly, the other is ridiculous, but there is no telling what madness infects a man when he becomes Fifa president.

First, the problem with 40 teams:

How would it work?

The 32-team World Cup is quite tidy, in organizational terms. Eight groups of four teams, all 32 teams guaranteed three matches, the first and second teams from each group advancing to a 16-team knockout phase. This has worked wonderfully since 1998, when it was first employed, and will survive at least through Qatar 2022.

But how do you work with 40? Ten groups of four? Ten group winners advance to the final 16, and six of the 10 runners-up? That is a recipe for awkward, and that’s the best way to come at this.

A World Cup of 48 teams sounds even nuttier as Infantino mused about it at the Fifa Futsal World Cup in Colombia.

He is suggesting that 16 teams be seeded into a 32-nation bracket, while the other 32 from the total of 48 qualifiers would play one-match elimination games, with 16 teams going home after one game and the other 16 joining the 32-team system.

Which would be a short experience for players and a short and potentially costly one for fans of 16 nations, which apparently does not concern Infantino.

It also would further dilute the tournament. As it is, various confederations (especially Asia and Africa) are always pining for more automatic berths to the 32-team bracket, and as a political sop let’s just guess and say Asian and Africa would get at least half of the new semi-berths … without having demonstrated that they deserve them.

How would the 16 seeded teams be determined? And it would mean some new and bizarre qualifying among the continental federations. “These three go directly to the seeded 16, these four go into the 16-game one-and-done bracket …”

Based on Fifa rankings? Performances in the previous World Cup?

Earlier this week, the Fifa vice president said: “I think it’s obvious it’s not going to stay at 32 for 2026.”

Which means 40 or 48. Sigh.

Forty teams is a bad idea, made to look only slightly less onerous by the existence of the “let’s do 48” proposal. The latter would mean about one of every four of Fifa’s 211 members would get into the tournament, which is too many, 16 of them for one game, which is ridiculous.

The current system is generous enough to give outsiders the hope of competing. And it works apparently too well to have any chance of survival.

The mind reels.