FOOTBALL doesn’t cease to amaze. Just as we assume it is getting predictable, that we’ve divined the logic behind this lark, there’s a twist. Or a full-fledged U-turn.

This past year has proven this in many ways.

In the Premier League, Leicester City were top at Christmas. It’s not just that this is the club who were playing Doncaster Rovers in the second-flight less than two years ago or that, we’ve all heard the story by now, they were bottom and seven points adrift on April Fool’s Day. There’s the whole absurdity of a club playing in a stadium called King Power, with a striker who wore an electronic tag and played non-league football until three years ago, a manager who was sacked by Greece for losing to the Faroe Islands and a gaggle of cast-offs, oddities and bargains.

Meanwhile, last year’s all-conquering champions, Chelsea, were navigating near the relegation waters by years’ end. Jose Mourinho lost as many games in four months as he did in the previous 20.

As improbable as the collapse on the pitch was, the manner was even more stunning. The Special One, universally seen as a players’ coach, the man who built a career not so much on tactical genius as on man-management and the ability to foster unity and buy-in from his squad, had seemingly come up short exactly where he was meant to be strongest. It was a bit like Gordon Ramsey ruining the souffle. Or Adele singing flat. We could fathom missteps, just not of this kind.

Nobody, upon his self-described homecoming, would have imagined that it would end with accusations of treachery and the Stamford Bridge faithful identifying last season’s top goalscorer (Diego Costa), top assist man (Cesc Fabregas) and player of the year (Eden Hazard) as the three rats.

Watford (not enough managerial stability, foreign newcomer on the bench, lack of Premier League experience) and Bournemouth (too many injuries, too many lower-league no-names) defied convention by soaring up the table, as did Norwich, with a 34 year old boss who began 2015 playing in central midfield for Hamilton Academical. Crystal Palace have soared all year under Alan Pardew, making you wonder if he sent his evil, unpleasant and incompetent twin to manage Newcastle towards the end of his tenure at St. James’. And Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal are title favourites right now which, given that some expected him to depart in the summer, is also a turnaround.

There was also plenty that was somewhat more predictable.

Manchester City would flatter to deceive and succumb to injuries.

Liverpool would, finally, get rid of Brendan Rodgers (though the fact that they’d wait until October and land the much-coveted Jurgen Klopp was more of a surprise) and Manchester United would spend massively and not get much better.

Beyond the sceptred isle, we had familiar title-winners in Germany (Bayern), France (Paris Saint-Germain), Spain (Barcelona) and Italy (Juventus). Yet, if the first two followed the usual military-march, the other two were somewhat counterintuitive. Max Allegri appeared to be some kind of Forrest Gump thrown in at the deep end when he replaced Antonio Conte, but the bianconeri ended up within one game of the Treble. A Treble that was ultimately won by Barcelona, of course, led by Luis Enrique, a man who began 2015 facing the sack. “Lucho”

walked into the job with two seasons of top-flight management in three years, at Roma (seventh) and Celta Vigo (ninth). Sandwiched between them, a sabbatical marked by running ultra-marathons in Africa and South America. Not exactly a ton of political capital to spend. And yet, Barcelona won five trophies in 2015, including their fourth European Cup. The man who –supposedly – was too introverted to handle superstars got the best out of arguably the greatest front three in history – Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez. And he did this at a time

when the tax man was harassing the first two, while many felt the third could snap and start biting at any moment. Doubtless, in the landscape of football, there are some who achieved greater odds in 2015. But there is nobody who did at such a high level.

Internationally, Chile won their first ever Copa America on their own soil, turning Jorge Sampaoli – if he wasn’t already – into the next Bielsaesque coaching savant to excite and titillate European clubs.

Sampaoli, a man who lives in a one-bedroom flat across the street from his office and whose furniture consists mainly of large screen TVs, a futon and nothing else cemented his reputation as the ascetic monk who will innovate football by playing 5’ 6” centerbacks. That revolution hasn’t quite crossed the Atlantic yet, but it came one step closer in 2015.

Meanwhile, the expanded Euros nevertheless managed to yield a high-profile victim: the Holland side who came within penalty kicks of the World Cup final a year earlier. That was a surprise, much like the rest of 2015 and perhaps more so than the likes of Wales, Iceland, Hungary and Northern Ireland – minnows all – making the tournament.

Away from the pitch, the seemingly unthinkable happened on the eve of the FIFA elections, when law enforcement raided the Baur-Au-Lac hotel in Zurich and the FBI indicted a raft of high-ranking football officials. Loretta Lynch, the US attorney general, had set her sights on football and, for many, there was nowhere to hide. Using racketeering statutes originally designed to fight the Mafia and taking advantage, the fact that the global banking system at some points transits via US financial institutions and the simple threat of the world’s only superpower, a gaggle of FIFA cxecutive committee members past and present came into the legal cross-hairs.

Sepp Blatter, the embattled FIFA supremo, survived the first shock – and was actually re-elected president, which says more about some of the folks who represent the 209 member nations – but subsequent jolts and a parallel investigation by the Swiss attorney general (caught in the vice of US diplomatic pressure and internal domestic dissatisfaction) left the man from Visp hanging by a thread. Just before Christmas, FIFA’s own ethics committee – which, ironically, he himself had set up and helped populate – slapped him with an eight year ban. All he has left is more legal appeals. Given his Telfon-like qualities, you don’t want to write him off just yet, but in fairness it appears his race is run.

The concurrent shock was that Michel Platini would also end up in the Blatter dragnet. The UEFA president was meant to be the white knight who would vanquish Blatter and clean up FIFA in a narrative that, let’s face it, is thinly veiled neo-colonialism: the lilywhite Europeans sorting the mess of the guy who sold the organisation to unethical developing world overlords. Yet Platini, too, received a ban from the ethics committee. He’s fighting it, he may or may not have a case – certainly, unlike Blatter at FIFA, Platini did not spend decades overseeing a corrupt organisation with little or no oversight – but the message is that nobody is beyond scrutiny. And that, certainly, is something those of us who had grown cynical of football politics, would never have expected.

Where to in 2016? Odds are, for surprises and shake-ups, it won’t hold a candle to 2015.