Oh, how sweet the smell of clear air. The AFL and NRL seasons are finished, and as the days get longer and hotter, football begins its creep into the back pages of the papers and further forward in the nightly news. The 10th season of the A-League has precipitated an outpouring of excitement, a bit of chest beating and an online orgy of self-congratulation from FFA. And why not. Football fans are known for their streak of separatism, but with a solid TV rights deal, a possibility that some clubs might actually make some money and record numbers of fans, it’s nice to think that the notoriously untidy house of football is finally in order.

It has been a year to turn inwards and take pride in Australian football. Ange Postecoglou was the first Australian to coach the Socceroos at a World Cup in 40 years, while the National Premier Leagues and the FFA Cup have shone some much-needed light on the have-nots, the volunteers and the clubs David Gallop likes to call “the engine room” of Australian football. Slowly but surely the cultural cringe towards the game in Australia is receding, and the A-League clubs are becoming part of the national imagination.

Indeed there is a nice confluence of events to bookend 2014: the World Cup in June and July, the launch of the FFA Cup in August and the Asian Cup on home soil in January 2015. There are, of course, still problems from the A-League to the grassroots, but it would be petty to disregard the advances made during football’s most successful decade. Truly there has not been a football boom as big as this in the nation’s history.

As Australia’s premier football historian Roy Hay comments, unlike previous boom periods, this one is driven by the domestic market and not by immigration. Compare the first 10 years of the A-League to that of the NSL. By 1987, the NSL had no money, no TV rights deal and precious little sponsorship revenue. Frank Lowy pulled Hakoah out of the competition in dramatic circumstances just one game into the 10th season. Lowy said “we have more fans at Rookwood cemetery than at our games”, while veteran journalist Andrew Dettre once described Hakoah’s crowd to me as “a few old Jewish men with varicose veins half-asleep in the sun”. As the children of the European immigrants assimilated, the traditional clubs that did so much for the game found it difficult to continue to grow and attract new fans. Not so these A-League clubs; their demographic is young, broad-based and increasingly middle class. They’ve got money and social capital, and they want to consume.

But while many things have changed, some things remain the same. Despite all the efforts from head office to equalise and spread the A-League to all parts of the country, the game is still heavily reliant on the success of Sydney and Melbourne.

Consider the opening to this season. A launch party hosted concurrently in Sydney and Melbourne; while the first round brought together Melbourne Victory, Western Sydney Wanderers, Melbourne City and Sydney FC in the prime time games. For a competition that concentrates its talent, operations, expertise and indeed most of its fans in two major centres, this was a savvy schedule, a triumph of the FFA functionary. The good people who live outside of Melbourne and Sydney don’t like hearing it, but deep down they know they are simply important decoration for the two major cities. Think of the rest of the clubs and their fans as the jewellery on a belly-dancer: the all-important wiggle and shake would go on without it, but it wouldn’t look half as good.

It is true that five of nine championships has been won by teams outside of Sydney and Melbourne. But even if Adelaide United and Perth Glory, for example, had won all the silverware in the first nine seasons, this Sydney-Melbourne axis would still continue to shape the progress of Australian football for the foreseeable future.

And as we enter the new season it is worth remembering the words of former Perth Glory owner Nick Tana, who once said that the national competition “will only be as strong as its weakest link”. For several seasons that weakest link was Melbourne Heart, and in one of the most important markets in the country, they were a millstone around the neck of the rest of the competition. Not so anymore. David Villa scoring on debut on Saturday night was just the heart-starter City needed to begin the next stage of their life in Melbourne. Expect a big crowd this weekend for their first home game at AAMI Park.

The sale of the club to the Abu Dhabi United Group is likely to be a game changer, and although it might not sit right with the purists, if you want pure football without the largesse of some questionably wealthy foreign overlords, you’re following the wrong competition. There is an argument to be made that we are living beyond our means, and perhaps we are overstretched to cover the costs of full-time professional wages, back room staff, marketing, promotions and large luxurious stadiums, but ultimately this is the standard necessary in such a competitive marketplace for sport. The A-League needs to be the rainmaker.

The next stage will be to strengthen and expand the core to pay for the nice decoration. With Gallop indicating that expansion will be dictated by population, the new teams will likely come from around Sydney and Melbourne, and at a stretch, Brisbane. Promotion and relegation from a second division won’t happen for a long time, and even if it is implemented, it won’t look like the traditional model. Football is business, and business likes the security of the cartel. In this very corporate, closed-market league, the only sacred principle is growth. Still, it is our league, and in 10 seasons it has already proved to be the most successful football experiment yet.