On Friday the FFA leadership sought to take the high ground ahead of the FIFA delegation arrival by confirming their intention to expand the A-League by two clubs by the 2010-20 season. They also announced plans to create a new corporate framework for the A-League/W-League which could give clubs more input over the running of the league and potentially provide new investment opportunities for existing and new clubs. However, few details of how these initiatives would work were given. There will be those who see these announcements as an olive branch to expedite the peace process while others will see it as a cynical attempt to deflect the attention of the FIFA delegation. No one will argue that expansion is not needed and the sooner it comes the better. While the FIFA intervention is ostensibly about coming up with a formula that will deliver a peaceful outcome over the disagreements over governance of the game, it is also, in a very real sense, about the leadership of the sport.

The two can no longer be separated, as FFA chairman Steven Lowy has now become the biggest factor linking the two issues. Sure, Simon Pearce of Melbourne City and Greg Griffin of Adelaide United, the two main frontmen for the A-League clubs opposed to Lowy, are key members of the dramatis personae in what has veered between a comedy of errors - without the jokes - and a Jacobean revenger's tragedy, which always ends with blood on the floor. FIFA will attempt to broker peace between Australian soccer's warring factions. Credit:EPA John Didulica of the players' union, the PFA, is also a major player, while the presidents of the state federations - with two notable exceptions in Victoria's Kimon Taliadoris and NSW's Anter Isaac - resemble the chorus who mouth the support lines fed to them to echo the principal player, Lowy. Tensions have simmered since Lowy's failure to push through his preferred formula for a new congress body late last year, but expect the temperature to be ratcheted up several degrees over the next five or six days.

At some point it is likely that someone will point to the beleaguered chairman and echo Churchill's famous wartime message to British prime minister Neville Chamberlain: " In the name of God, go." The clubs have not resiled from their position, which is essentially to curtail Lowy's power and influence, re-organise the congress so that it more effectively gives a voice to all the stakeholders in the game and, crucially, forward their push to give the A-League a large measure of , if not complete, autonomy. The PFA is siding with the clubs, demanding separate representational rights for its men's and the women's members. Lowy is implacable in his opposition and his position has consistently been that only the FFA board and the congress - which the chairman has historically controlled through the support of state federations - can act with the whole interests of the game at heart, not just the interests of the clubs, the A-League and the professional game. He does have some supporters in the wider soccer community who are mistrustful of the clubs' intentions and are concerned about what might happen at grass-roots level.

But perhaps not enough. Certainly within the game it would seem that his position is as untenable now as it was a few months ago given his lack of support from the clubs, the players and the two biggest state federations. It was the decision of Victoria and NSW to vote against the incumbent and side with his opponents which scuppered Lowy's hopes of getting his own way with a revamped proposal for congress late last year. Those who frustrated him feared his plans would enshrine the status quo and guarantee the power structures would remain as they are. He argued that it was they who were the vested interests who would damage the game in the future. It's hard to see how that gulf can be bridged without seismic change.

Since then new players have emerged and are now demanding that their voices be heard when the FIFA peacemakers land. A separate women's group has put its hand up. The referees want a say, as do the coaches and a new fans group. And the AAFC - the Australian Association of Football Clubs, formed around this time last year - has emerged as another powerful lobby group. It is determined to put its case to FIFA and advocate the case for a national second division (which would bring Australia into line with the vast majority of the rest of the world) with promotion and relegation to bolster game development. The dynamics of the situation, given the new voices that have emerged, will make that even harder as the question of proportionality will now become an issue.

If the all these parties want a vote in congress, will the A-League clubs and the PFA be happy to have the same number of votes as they would have accepted last November? Will they argue that their stake in the game is greater and that they should have even more if these new bodies gain a vote so as not to dilute their influence? How FIFA will react is anyone's guess. It is understood that their remit is not to impose a solution - however desirable that might be - but to try to shepherd the warring parties towards a fresh consensus. Good luck. They are going to need it.