Like in any walk of life, you have favourites; teams and individuals who tend to dominate. Yet even the best can occasionally be overcome by someone who may not be in the same stratosphere talent or experience-wise, but, to put it bluntly, is just having a good day.

As an Arsenal football fan, I can say this with some smugness after their shock 2-0 win over Bayern Munich in the Champions League, while in recent weeks we have seen one of the greatest sporting upsets of all time in Japan toppling South Africa at the Rugby World Cup.

In sports administration, however, surprises are thinner on the ground. Almost every event tends to pan out according to a pre-planned script, and the challenge from our point of view is working out exactly what that script is.

I suppose this is the case in politics or business generally, where less depends on an individual moment of genius or an appalling error.

In mainstream politics at least you tend to have a broadly even battle between competing groups: be they arms of Government, Parliament, pressure groups, corporate powers or, dare I say it, press and public. In sport, it tends to be even more single-handed and the views of two or three key power-brokers invariably holds sway.

This has always been the case in the Olympic Movement, but throughout my time of covering it in the last two years, generally I have found that if you can work out what International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach wants, or what his Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) counterpart, Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah is after, then you won’t go far wrong.

“There are a few wise old heads in the Olympic world,” an IOC member once told me. “They will not tell you what to do exactly, but will give you a suggestion or a word of advice about what would be best.”

Most major events in recent months have been controlled in this way: from the Agenda 2020 reform process to the vote for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games to the silent, but brutally effective, coup d'état to remove Marius Vizer as President of SportAccord,

Which is why everything that continues to happen with FIFA is so intriguing because this is increasingly clearly not the case.

Until May, football’s world governing body was probably the most extreme example of this "top-down" rule in action. Yes, there had been scandals, and certain figures like Qatar’s Mohamed bin Hammam have been thrown to the wolves, but generally it has only been those outside the inner sanctum who had been caught, and even in the build-up to May’s FIFA Congress in Zurich, it would have taken a brave person indeed to have predicted Sepp Blatter would not successfully serve at least one more term in office.

Then we had the arrest of vice-president Jeffrey Webb and other members of the top brass on the eve of the vote, and the levee holding in a tidal wave of shame was breached.

Blatter won the election, just, over the respected but politically inexperienced Prince Ali bin Hussein, but two days later shocked the world by announcing his resignation.

Still he seemed to hold much power, and certainly appeared the key figure in deciding what happened next. Then, though, as August ticked over into September, we had another raft of revelations, and for the first time in his entire career, Blatter himself was implicated.

At this point, UEFA President Michel Platini appeared the favourite to take over. He had worked the lobbies and meeting rooms and seemed to have convinced the powers that be he was the man for the job.

Sticking your head over the parapet can be dangerous, however, and suddenly Platini was swept up in the storm as well, all because of one "disloyal" payment of CHF 2 million (£1.3 million/$2.1 million/€1.8 million) allegedly received from Blatter a decade ago.

It is obviously difficult to say this once and for all, but it appears too much of a coincidence that the piece of skulduggery to emerge involving Blatter concerns the Frenchman, someone long identified as a rival.

The same could be said about the demise of South Korea’s Chung Moon-joon, another who had declared his intention to run for the poisoned chalice that is the sport’s top job.

Chung has withdrawn from the running, and despite some ambiguity in the rules, Platini’s suspension means his chances are effectively over as well.

This has been the predominant topic of conversation here so far as delegates arrive in the United States capital for this week’s ANOC General Assembly.

And the impression we are getting is that the so brutal demise of Platini has taken everyone by surprise.

Sheikh Ahmad, for example, who is also now a member of FIFA’s Executive Committee and is considered almost as influential in footballing circles as he is in Olympic ones, was supportive of Platini earlier this summer.

He is now widely seen as having switched his support to current front-runner Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa, the Asian Football Confederation President, but the impression we are getting is that confidence in anyone has taken a major hit, and no-one quite knows what is going to happen next.

Allegations about Sheikh Salman's role in torture in his native Bahrain have damaged him but not fatally, and in a footballing sense he certainly has the advantage of being a relative newbie in the FIFA stakes, less damaged than some, yet, like most of the other candidates, there could be more secrets to appear.

“We are hopeful about the chances of Sheikh Salman,” I was told by one source close to Sheikh Ahmad last night. “But who knows what will come out next.”

Since then, we have had the news that UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino has thrown his hat into the ring, with a good chunk of Europe supposedly behind him, and suddenly we have a genuine contest on our hands.

One key reason for all this confusion is that no single body is driving the agenda.

Different Continental Federations all wield some sway but are not singing from the same hymn-sheet. Blatter and other members of the old guard are still playing a role, but to what extent it is hard to say. And then there is the influence of the media, not to mention the US and Swiss prosecutors.

It is these last two groups who are making matters so intriguing. The attention is so exacting, it is difficult to see any secrets remaining hidden for long any more, and this is completely different to in other areas of sport, where the intrusion is not in the same stratosphere.

So the FIFA crisis has shaken sports administration severely, probably to an even greater extent than the Salt Lake City 2002 scandal did with the IOC.

The reaction from the Olympic Movement has been rather fragmented. At first, they were reluctant to criticise and stood behind Blatter, a long-term ally and IOC member. Then, when the ship was clearly sinking, the life boat was pulled away by Bach, who launched a strongly-worded statement claiming "enough is enough" and calling for profound changes to be made.

There are fears that the scandal may cause problems for other sports, and give an impression that all Federations are as bad as FIFA, but, while some are keen to come out and criticise Blatter like Bach did, many others are still sitting on the fence.

Plenty more twists and turns lie ahead, but one thing is for sure. All normal rules for predicting how events will pan out no longer apply in football, and many of those "inside" the circle now appear just as unsure as to what will happen next as those outside looking in.