A 300-page blueprint for the future of professional football in Australia will be sent to FIFA ahead of the expected decision from Zurich to remove the Football Federation Australia board and temporarily govern the local game.
The start of intervention from world football's governing body will begin as early as Tuesday morning after the FFA's failure to oversee reforms and expand its congress to become more inclusive and representative by the November 30 deadline.
It is expected a FIFA Members Association Committee meeting will rule to put in place a normalisation committee that will disband the FFA Board and administer Australian football for no more than 18 months to finally break the bitter impasse that has brought Australian football's governance to a standstill.
Should that be the recommendation on Tuesday morning, FIFA will start their administration of Australian football with a lengthy dossier including detailed information on the finances of the FFA and a road map for an expanded A-League of up to 16 teams.
Compiled jointly by the Australian players' union, the PFA, and the A-League club owners, the document is understood to go into significant detail outlining issues of funding, management grievances and problems with player development pathways in Australian football.
The dossier outlines how the 10-team A-League is alleged to have operating costs of $7 million spent on wages and benefits - not including travel costs - drawn from revenue of $48 million in 2017. It compares those figures with the Scottish Football League, which spent $2 million on staff with $56 million in revenue in 2015, managing 42 clubs. The English Football League (excluding the Premier League) had staff costs of about $9 million from $220 million for 72 clubs in 2015. The FFA declined to comment on this figure.
The aim of the document is to help lower the costs of running the A-League, said to have been absorbed largely by wages. The joint blueprint will also address issues of expansion, a new A-League operating model that will see the competition become independent of the FFA and address investment opportunities in Australian football.
Meanwhile, administrators past and present have hit back at FFA chairman Steven Lowy after claims made during a heated press conference on Thursday. PFA chief executive John Didulica rebuked Lowy's suggestion that the rejection of the FFA's proposal for a new congress was motivated by "money and control".
Didulica was present at Thursday's annual general meeting but was not eligible to vote. He suggested the two overriding issues were about "the balance of the Congress, which currently gives the state federations a majority of voting power" and "embedding gender equality within the FFA membership ... FIFA has made it clear to FFA over a long period of time that these two issues need to be resolved to their satisfaction."
Didulica rejected fears of FIFA intervention derailing Australian football's progression and concerns over the image, suggesting much of that is unfounded given the success of other nations while governed by normalisation committees.
"Even in the event of FIFA normalisation, there is no reason why Australia can't continue to compete at the international level, the same way the likes of Greece have in recent times," he said.
Former Soccer Australia chairman David Hill implored Steven Lowy to step aside. Hill's own tenure with Soccer Australia was one besieged by bitter political infighting, notably as a result of his war against ethnic-based National Soccer League teams, a pay dispute with the PFA and the Socceroos players.
While Hill praised the success of Frank Lowy's tenure as FFA Chairman, he believes the current board should consider stepping aside to allow for reforms.
"I think the impasse that has now been reached has been unfair, unreasonable and unstable and I'm calling on the FFA to embrace changes that would restore a great level of democracy and representation," Hill said.
