This week’s meeting with confederations in Zurich produced a 136-word media release and no new details.

A working group composed of the general secretaries of the six confederations and FIFA will now “analyse further the relevance and feasibility” of staging both this new-look Club World Cup and a new Nations League.

Based on recent articles by normally well-informed football specialists, what seems to be under consideration is a 24-team club competition, half from Europe, starting in 2021, in the northern-hemisphere summer, and played every fourth year.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there is little justification for such an overblown format until someone does something about the overwhelming – and increasing – concentration of wealth, and therefore talent, among a tiny minority of at most 20 Europe-based clubs.

Until that changes, the latter stages of a new Club World Cup, would do little more than replicate the business end of the UEFA Champions League – and do yet more to exacerbate the existing financial imbalance.

The stand-out performers from non-European qualifying clubs might, moreover, be snapped up even more quickly by the European giants.

Such logic, impeccable as it might be on competitive grounds, overlooks what seems to be the critical factor driving the whole concept forward however: the state of FIFA’s finances.

You would never guess this from reading the governing body’s latest financial report, which claims it “can look back on a successful 2017 for all key financial parameters”, and the organisation remains phenomenally wealthy compared with most other international sports federations (IFs), but in elite football terms FIFA is being left behind.

And while this is partly because of its deeply tarnished brand, which may be making the World Cup a tougher sponsorship sell than usual, it is partly because of its very limited financial exposure to day-in day-out club football.

FIFA now expects to exceed its 2015-18 revenue budget of $5.66 billion (£4.15 billion/€4.72 billion), which sounds impressive until you remember that it generated $5.72 billion (£4.2 billion/€4.77 billion) in 2011-14.

Its current forecast is for revenue of $6.56 billion (£4.82 billion/€5.47 billion) in 2019-22.

That would constitute growth of some $840 million (£617 million/€700 million), or less than 15 per cent, in eight years.

Compare that with the 70 per cent increase in the value of domestic TV rights announced by England’s Premier League in 2015, even if growth looks set to slow dramatically under the league’s latest deal.

Or compare it with the European football body UEFA, which – as FIFA President and former UEFA man Gianni Infantino well knows – generates masses of revenue every year from the club game, thanks to the Champions League and Europa League.

UEFA revenue grew from €1.7 billion (£1.5 billion/$2 billion) in 2012-13 to €2.84 billion (£2.5 billion/$3.4 billion) in 2016-17 – an increase of 67 per cent, and from €2.8 billion (£2.5 billion/$3.4 billion) in 2011-12 to €4.58 billion (£4.03 billion/$5.5 billion) in 2015-16 – an increase of 63.5 per cent.

(The high revenue figures for 2011-12 and 2015-16 are because they were European Championship years.)

In the last four years, indeed, UEFA has generated aggregate revenue of a mammoth €11.25 billion (£9.9 billion/$13.5 billion) – well over double FIFA’s 2015-18 budget.

No wonder FIFA, which remains fundamentally a one-trick pony in revenue terms, has set its sights on a bigger chunk of the colossal income streams that the great club brands are capable of generating.

In my view, a less confrontational, more socially beneficial and useful strategy would be for the world body to go hell for leather to promote the Women’s World Cup, a tournament with immense growth potential that it already has in its portfolio.

But that would require patience.

And, as we all know, patience is a commodity in ever more painfully short supply in modern football.

Can you see clearly now?