Interestingly, however, the carnage has not come at the FIFA Partnership level, the top tier, even though the world body has one fewer such sponsor in 2015 - five - than the half-dozen on board four years ago.

Between them, this quintet – Adidas, Coca-Cola, Gazprom, Hyundai/Kia and Visa - contributed exactly $180 million (£124 million/€159 million) in 2015, according to FIFA’s just-published financial and governance report.

This compares with $177.125 million (£122.211 million/€156.881 million) chipped in by Adidas, Coca-Cola, Emirates, Hyundai/Kia, Sony and Visa four years earlier.

This contribution remained constant through the subsequent three years running up to and including the Brazil 2014 World Cup.

This made for an overall contribution of $708.5 million (£489 million/€627.5 million), or an average of just over $118 million (£81 million/€105 million) each.

Assuming the current five FIFA Partners similarly pay $180 million (£124 million/€159 million) per annum right through to Russia 2018, this would make for an average of $144 million each (£99 million/€128 million)– in effect, a 22 per cent uplift in the ticket price for top-tier FIFA sponsorship.

It is not known whether each individual FIFA Partner does in fact pay the same amount to belong to the programme.

The picture turns bleak for FIFA only when scrutinising the sums raised from lower sponsorship tiers.

The FIFA World Cup sponsors category contributed only $44.5 million (£31 million/€39 million) in 2015.

This compared with $130.8 million (£90.2 million/€115.8 million) in 2011 - an annual total that was broadly maintained all the way through to Brazil 2014.

Companies falling into this category then included the likes of Budweiser, Continental and Yingli Solar.

The national supporters category generated a big fat zero in 2015, compared with $28.6 million (£19.7 million/€25.3 million) in 2011 - a total that increased to more than $40 million (£27.5 million/€35.5 million) in each of the next three years.

National supporters of Brazil 2014 included Apex-Brasil, Itaú and Liberty Seguros.

The new regime at FIFA will now be looking to Russian companies to step in and at least match the $164 million (£113 million/€145 million) contributed between 2011 and 2014 by these national supporters between now and the crowning of the new world champions in 2018.

They were boosted today by confirmation that the Wanda Group had signed up to become the first Chinese sponsor of FIFA. 

The agreement was announced today in Zurich  the presence of FIFA President Gianni Infantino and Wanda Group’s chairman Wang Jianlin.

As part of their agreement, Wanda Group will have rights to all FIFA competitions and corporate activities up to and including the 2030 FIFA World Cup

By contrast, FIFA’s revenue from television broadcasting rights – its largest single income source – registered a substantial increase in 2015 compared with four years earlier.

This underlines how the reputation of the body’s flagship tournament has emerged largely unscathed from the crisis, something that may yet prove FIFA’s salvation.

Revenue from this source amounted to $628.5 million (£434 million/€557 million) last year, up from $550.3 million (£379.7 million/€487.6 million) in 2011.

The most impressive advance - from $61.2 million (£42.2 million/€54.2 million) to $130.2 million (£89.9 million/€115.4 million)  - was registered in North America and the Caribbean, perhaps reflecting the sport’s growing popularity in the United States.

South/Central America and Asia and North Africa also made significantly increased contributions.

The sum generated from Europe, by contrast, fell by almost exactly $100 million (£69 million/€89 million) , from $281.1 million (£194.1 million/€249.1 million) in 2011 to $181.2 million (£125.1 million/€160.5)  last year.

These details emerged as FIFA reported a deficit of $122 million (£84 million/€108 million) for 2015 - much as expected - on revenue of $1.15 billion (£79 million/€1.11 million).

The new report also revealed that Gianni Infantino, elected President on February 26, has moved to rewrite FIFA’s 2015-2018 budget.

The main aim of this appears to be to enable the new man to start to make good the spending pledges that helped to get him elected.

Whereas the original budget for the four-year cycle that will culminate with the 2018 World Cup pencilled in $900 million of development spending, this has now been lifted by well over 50 per cent (assuming the proposal is accepted) to $1.417 billion (£98 million/€1.255 billion).

And where - given FIFA’s annus horribilis – is this extra cash going to come from?

Infantino has opted to up the revenue forecast from $5 billion (£3.5 billion/€4 billion) exactly to $5.656 billion (£3.901 billion/€5.009 billion).

Even given the dreadful start to the cycle, this is not as ambitious a new target as some might presume.

FIFA managed to generate more than $5.1 billion (£3.5 billion/€4.5 billion) of event-related revenue alone over the four years culminating with the last World Cup in Brazil in 2014.

Under normal circumstances, the original goal for 2015-18 would have been comfortably outstripped.

While the sponsorship figures discussed above clearly imply that marketing revenues must be running well behind target, there were already rumours at last month’s Extraordinary Congress that a substantial new Chinese sponsor might soon be signed up.

On the cost side, expenditure reached $1.274 billion (£878 million/€1.128 billion) in 2015 - up $240 million (£165 million/€212 million) from the total incurred in 2011.

Spending on legal matters doubled from $31.3 million (£21.5 million/€27.2 million) in 2014 to $61.5 million (£42.3 million/€54.4 million).