Just this once, however, I am going to chance it:

In the following numerical sequence what is the next, and final, number? 10, 11, 35, 46, 53 –

The answer - which might have foxed mathematicians, but will have been easy-peasy for anyone with a passing acquaintance with football politics - is 54.

These are the number of National associations belonging to each of the six regional football Confederations, from CONMEBOL, representing South America, with 10, to CAF, representing Africa, with 54.

Anyone with an interest in next year’s FIFA Presidential election would do well to commit this sequence, and the confederation to which each individual figure pertains, to memory.

For all the outlandish twists and turns, the vituperative claims and counter-claims to which we will be subjected over the next four months of campaigning, these are the besetting facts of the exercise; the geopolitical landscape candidates have to work with.

It follows, now we know the identity of the seven, or eight, men from whose ranks the next President of world football’s governing body will be drawn - probably - that a good way of assessing the balance of forces is to try and work out who is in possession of the biggest potential bloc-votes.

The result on February 26 will not be as clear-cut as that statement implies; there will always be National Associations prepared to disobey the Confederational whip, and more power to their elbow.

But by keeping this figure in mind, as well as the magic number of 105 that will ensure victory (on the day, a slightly smaller tally might suffice), observers can retain some hope of being able to separate the pre-polling day wheat from the chaff, the hot air from those elements that might actually have some bearing on the outcome.

I have been writing about an apparent Euro-Asian alliance for some months now.

This was partly in evidence at the time of the last FIFA Presidential election only last May, when UEFA President Michel Platini urged Switzerland’s Sepp Blatter to resign while appealing to National Associations to back Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, his Jordanian challenger.

Prince Ali, though, was unable to attract sufficient support from within his own Asian Football Confederation (AFC), even in the wake of a dramatic dawn raid by Swiss police that brought the arrest of six FIFA officials, and eventually went down by 133 votes to 73.

Subsequently, Platini and UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino, forged an alliance with the principal powerbroker in Asian sport, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of Kuwait.

Sheikh Ahmad has been a key figure behind the rise of Bahrain’s Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa to the AFC Presidency.

Anyone who doubted that this alliance - which could conceivably deliver 46 (AFC) + 53 (UEFA) = 99 votes, i.e. nearly enough to win, to a favoured FIFA Presidential candidate - had held firm over the recent somewhat turbulent weeks will have been put right by Sheikh Ahmad’s comments this week to my colleague Nick Butler.

"I was a supporter for Michel, I still am a supporter for Michel," Sheikh Ahmad said of Platini, who, while remaining a FIFA Presidential candidate, has suffered a major setback owing to a 90-day suspension over an allegedly "disloyal" payment, imposed by the FIFA Ethics Committee.

"If he has the right to run we will support him."

Sheikh Ahmad further indicated that he thought Sheikh Salman, also a candidate in the FIFA race along with Infantino, would withdraw from the contest if Platini, who is fighting his corner and insists that the payment is legitimate, is allowed to run.

Now, four months is a terribly, terribly long time in football politics.

The fact that all three of these men - Platini, Sheikh Salman and Infantino - are currently running suggests to me that everyone is hedging their bets.

However, if this UEFA-AFC alliance proves worth its salt over what is bound to be a testing period between now and polling day, I think it very likely that only one of them will stay the course, though I would not like to say which one at present.

It seems just about inconceivable that Infantino, who was born just nine kilometres away from Blatter in a place called Brig in Switzerland, would run against Platini.

If polling day dawns with both Sheikh Salman, who has faced allegations that he recently dismissed as "nasty lies" relating to Bahrain’s 2011 pro-democracy uprising,  and the man from Brig on the ballot paper, meanwhile, I think we could conclude the alliance had broken down.

Infantino, moreover, looks a more than plausible candidate for FIFA general secretary in the event of a Platini or Sheikh Salman victory. 

The other man who looks likely to have a large potential bloc-vote to build on is Tokyo Sexwale of South Africa.

Though Liberia’s Musa Bility is also on the start-line, Sexwale, recently appointed to lead a new FIFA monitoring committee on issues affecting the development of football in Palestine, seems better-placed to garner the bulk of Africa’s 54 votes.

If he is to rival the Platini-Infantino-Sheikh Salman axis, Sexwale must collar votes in another region, which makes David Nakhid’s failure to be accepted as a candidate rather interesting.

The former Trinidad and Tobago international, who has promised to appeal against the decision, was apparently blocked because one of the member Associations who supported him had also issued a declaration of support for another candidate.

It certainly cannot be assumed that the majority of the 35 associations in the CONCACAF region, covering North and Central America and the Caribbean, would have supported Nakhid.

But without him those votes have no automatic natural constituency, and Sexwale’s status as a figure in his country’s anti-apartheid struggle may help him to capture at least some of them.

If he could somehow attract the vast majority of the 89 votes available from the two regions, then the two smaller continental bodies, CONMEBOL and the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) could suddenly become the main battleground.

With the best will in the world, it is hard to see how either Prince Ali, shorn of his European support and seemingly unlikely to make headway in Asia, or Jérôme Champagne, the supremely knowledgeable French former FIFA insider, can gain much traction, unless these other rivals are either barred or comprehensively discredited.

As with Infantino, one could more readily see Champagne in the general secretary’s role.

Then again, to repeat, four months is a terribly, terribly long time in football politics, or political politics for that matter.

Ask the new British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn...

After so long ensnared in the thickets of FIFA’s convoluted actuality, it came as a welcome interlude this week to be able to spend an afternoon reflecting on the majesty and poetry of sport, albeit in melancholy circumstances.

This was at a service of thanksgiving for the life of Sir Peter O’Sullevan, horseracing commentator and journalist extraordinaire, and so much else besides, at St Luke’s Church in Chelsea.

His sport, of course, did him proud: Lester Piggott, A.P.McCoy and Paul Nicholls were all in attendance, along with dozens of other racing figures from various eras.

But in the course of a long life, Sir Peter far outgrew the milieu in which he made his name and became a national figure in his own right.

Accordingly, Sir Terry Wogan and Rory Bremner were on hand to make their contributions, Joanna Lumley read Philip Larkin and the congregation filed out, most fittingly, to Piaf’s signature tune, Je Ne Regrette Rien.

Lord Vestey represented the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Centrepiece was a eulogy by another great journalist Hugh McIlvanney, who observed that O’Sullevan’s was "in the best possible sense, a knowing voice…he was in a league of his own".

O’Sullevan, whose generosity of spirit I can myself vouch for, is the third sports commentating "great" we have lost in the past two years, after David Coleman and Richie Benaud.

There must be millions of us who owe our love of sport in part to the inspired, sagacious verbal embellishments of this revered triumvirate.

The marvel of digitalisation means snatches of the evocative soundtrack they created remain accessible at will

I must admit though that with their passing, the route back to my childhood seems just a little more distant.