The Daily Mail's otherwise excellent Martin Samuels called Fifa's plans "ruinous" and offered Leicester's Premier League title last year as justification. Their fairytale win, he argued, was achieved because the big six clubs had goofed off; Leicester had made them honest and had since provoked a rise in standards.
This completely overlooks the fact exposure to top level football allowed Leicester to prosper. While their Premiership campaign is listing this season, they have reached the top 16 of the Champions League along with names like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich. It also ignores an unwritten law of sport: Want to improve? Play the best.
Samuels went on to say: "The weaker a tournament becomes, the more the football suffers. This summer's European Championship had the odd feelgood event but, largely, the matches were ordinary. Iceland's progress held a certain charm but you wouldn't want to watch them every week. Portugal won, so Cristiano Ronaldo got what he deserved but few will regard his team-mates as great champions."
What you are really hearing is a touch of tired-old-hack-itis and snobbery (not unlike Princess Margaret's) which comes from watching too much elite sport - with the facility for appreciating opportunities for others correspondingly dulled.
So, invoking the spirit of Iceland, Leicester and the delicious uncertainty of sport when unexposed talent is admitted to the rarefied air of top competition, Infantino's move (admittedly self-serving as it buys votes to shore up his reign) may prove beneficial.
Of far more interest than all the European snivelling is the 2026 venue - with the favourite North America, perhaps a joint venture between US, Canada and Mexico (as long as everyone can climb over Donald Trump's wall and watch football in a crowd of rapists).
The biggest reasonable criticism of a three-team group is collusion - as happened in 1982 when Germany and Austria played out an infamous tactical draw, preventing a promising Algerian team from proceeding to the knockouts. Penalty shoot-outs will fix that.