After almost 72 years of the World Cup taking place quadrennially – adding another 20 on top, if you include the two editions lost to World War II – it would be complacent to assume that a seemingly untouchable sequence should proceed without being needlessly examined.

The four-year cycle is a long time for football fans. That is as indisputable as it is symbolic of how much supporters cherish the month-long football festival when the World Cup is on. No feasibility studies of the kind sugggested by FIFA this week, put forward by Saudi Arabia at a congress, are required to conclude that it is worth every minute of the wait and a timespan that no one who cares about the sport would wish to curtail.

Amid the collateral damage of the European Super League (ESL) being mauled by fans, you might hope that football's guardians would think twice before putting forward more radical thinking that appears to be less ignorant of the way audiences feel, more laser-crafted to resemble the polar opposite of the desires held by the people who ultimately make the game the commodity that some clearly see it as.

The ESL was an embarrassment partly because of how little understanding it betrayed from those behind it. The disconnect between investors and customers, if we must call the relationship that, was a damning indictment of the drought of discerment held by many of those at the top of the game about where the line lies between the boundaries of evolution and self-destruction.

For football now, as the saying might go in the most cringeworthy of business meetings, no idea seems too far-fetched. Fans who once questioned awful goal music replacing the cheers of supporters or matches taking place every day of the week now resemble quaintly naive complainants aiming a paper aeroplane at an unstoppable commercial machine.

Supporters are people, too – some of them even daring to have brains and business sense. Change is inevitable, as the older guard so witheringly said to have been referred to as "legacy fans" by the ESL project know as much as anyone.

FIFA says it wants "fewer yet more meaningful competitive national team matches". So do fans, as the success of the Nations League has shown.

Those longer-standing supporters have already had their loyalty tested by a procession of contentious game-changers, from matches they cannot realistically travel to at the behest of television scheduling to a World Cup taking place in an entirely different season that is logistically onerous to attend. It is patronizing at best to conjecture that newer fans do not feel similarly.