And you thought it was difficult to keep track of 32 World Cup teams …

Starting with the 2026 tournament, Fifa will give Planet Soccer 48 national teams for its quadrennial event.

If it seems like overkill, it is. Nearly one in four of Fifa’s 209 members will be at the 2026 World Cup, which would suggest it will not be the almost-elite event we had seen since 1998, in a 32-team competition.

From Fifa’s perspective, raising the number of teams by 50 percent makes sense on two levels.

–It will give 16 more voting members, most of them from the lesser continental federations, a place in the tournament and Gianni Infantino, the new president of the ruling body, to thank for it.

And what matters most …

–It will generate an estimated $1 billion in additional revenue for Fifa’s tournament, with $640 million of it profit.

Infantino’s successful campaign to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter as Fifa president included a pledge to give every national committee $5 million a year to spend on (we hope) development of the game.

The bigger tournament is expected to make that possible, with 80 games, 16 more than were generated by the 32-team tournament.

In addition to the inevitable watering down of the competition, with 16 more teams, the tournament also will feature a switch to 16 groups of three teams (from eight groups of four), with the top two in each group advancing to a 32-team knockout phase.

Group play will generate three matches, and one team in each group will be sitting around watching what the other two do in the final match. That could lead to situations where the two teams in action will know exactly what they need to do to advance, which may not include having to win.

Also, the expansion will raise the numbers of qualifying teams from continental federations that do not really deserve them, given historical performances.

To wit: Concacaf (North America) is expected to get 6.5 berths under the new system, up from 3.5 — when the region rarely has three competent sides at the same time; Africa will go to nine teams from five, in a particular act of charity; Asia will climb to 8.5 from 4.5; Oceania climbs from .5 to one (meaning New Zealand will become a World Cup regular).

Meanwhile, the two continents that have produced every champion so far, Uefa (Europe) and Conmebol (South America), will get a modest rise in numbers. Europe would go from 13 to 16, and South America from 4.5 to six.

Many of Europe’s club sides and their leagues are not excited about the change, suggesting Infantino pushed it for political reasons — ingratiating himself with the membership — and did not give the clubs any input into the decision.

Elite clubs tend to think they are the highest form of life in the game, responsible for creating intense interest. But Fifa does what it wants, even when it makes for an unnecessary change of a system that was working just fine.