In the latest part of Guardian Australia’s series analysing the current state of the game, Joe Gorman looks at an idea that’s easy to like but much more difficult to implement – and the battle raging between expansionists and traditionalists

This was the A-League season when Tim Cahill came home, when video technology was introduced for referees, and when Sydney FC smashed several records to win the premiership and the championship. It was also the season in which the gulf between big cities, small cities and regional areas was most pronounced, in which A-League owners and National Premier League clubs grew increasingly impatient with Football Federation Australia, and interest in the A-League flatlined across the country.

The 2016-17 grand final was a fitting metaphor for the competition as a whole: a willing spectacle played on a shaky, uncertain surface.

The issues facing the A-League have now become painfully obvious: 10 franchises do not provide adequate opportunity for Australian players and coaches, nor does it offer enough content for fans and broadcasters. The A-League, wrote Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou in his recent book, Changing the Game, “is a great product but it can’t be what Australia needs it to be with just 10 teams”.

The challenge for FFA is to break the bottleneck on development without compromising the commercial viability of the professional game. This season it has delayed releasing its criteria for expansion, resisted calls for a second division and promotion and relegation, and announced that it is working on a “new structure” for the A-League. And so, in the grey space created by their inertia, two divergent schools of thought regarding the future of the domestic competition have formed. Roughly, they can be categorised as the expansionists and the traditionalists.

The expansionists want to progressively introduce more franchises into the A-League over the next few seasons. Most agree that 14 to 18 teams would be an ideal number, and putting their money where their mouth is are the bidders themselves: South Melbourne, Wollongong Wolves, Brisbane Strikers, FC Brisbane City and consortiums from Tasmania, Geelong, Dandenong-Casey and Southern Expansion in NSW.

Everyone thinks that Australia is a unique football environment. It is not Tom Kalas, AAFC chairman

The traditionalists want to establish a second division and, eventually, a system of promotion and relegation. Many journalists and commentators are beating this drum; it is technically the policy of the Asian Football Confederation and Fifa, and leading the charge is the recently-formed Association of Australian Football Clubs (AAFC), which represents a majority of the current NPL sides. Point Two of the AAFC’s objectives is to have a second division up and running by 2018-19, with promotion and relegation to follow.

In other words, the expansionists seek to strategically increase the size of the A-League cartel; the traditionalists seek to break it up.

“Everyone thinks that Australia is a unique football environment,” says Tom Kalas, the chairman of the AAFC. “It is not. Football has grown to what it is internationally because of a very sound platform which has promotion and relegation and the other basic tenets that Fifa espouses. Australia is not unique.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The creation of a national second division would require a significant increase from the current expenditure in the NPL. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

John Didulica, the chief executive of the players union, Professional Footballers Australia, is suggesting a third way: a national second division and promotion without relegation. He believes the A-League should look to the example set by Major League Soccer in the United States, which successfully managed the promotion of Seattle Sounders from the second tier United Soccer League in 2009. A cost analysis conducted by PFA found that an Australian second division would require clubs to operate at $5.5m per annum, with a league budget of $10-12m per annum.

“A national second tier makes perfect policy sense, it’s just about doing it in such a way that enhances the sport and helps drive our international competitiveness,” says Didulica. “Like many in the game, I love the romance of promotion and relegation. I think, however, that we need to focus on the first part of the equation – promotion – in the long term. ”

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Kalas said PFA’s figures are “aspirational” but was unwilling to put a number on what is achievable for second-tier clubs. The AAFC will conduct its own cost analysis, he said, after it has worked out its “internal mechanisms” and sat down with all the other stakeholders.

“The maturity level of our game’s development is not there to sustain the A-League, let alone a second division at $5m,” says Kalas, referring to PFA’s figures. “To have a $5m capitalisation base for a second division, I don’t think we’re there yet culturally.”

In any case, the creation of a national second division would require a significant increase from the current expenditure in the NPL. Such a competition would require new sponsors, some kind of broadcast deal, a marketing strategy and at least some full-time players, coaches and club administrators. And it is unlikely that any current or potential investors would commit to this without some promise of promotion to the A-League in the future. As Kalas said: “How are you going to build a second division if there’s no promotion six, seven years down the track?”

The big question, of course, is whether enough money and public interest exists to maintain a viable, national second division. The AAFC and PFA think there is. Kalas believes a second division with promotion and relegation would precipitate “an explosion of capital and investment in clubs and facilities.” Others, such as Melbourne Victory founder Tony Ising, are more sceptical. “All the money that people bring to the table is for the top tier,” said Ising in a recent interview with the For Vuck’s Sake podcast, “… a second tier is a waste of money and a highway to nowhere”.

Brisbane City, who currently play in the NPL and belong to the AAFC, have launched a bid to be part of an expanded A-League and W-League. The club, which was founded in 1952 by Italian immigrants, would rebrand as FC Brisbane City and play at Ballymore Stadium. Its 80-page proposal is said to be one of the most detailed in competition history. Bid chairman Robert Cavallucci spent nearly five months devising the financial model and said that he “would never have done it for a second tier”.

The step up from second division to first division, it’s a whole different ball game Robert Cavallucci, Brisbane City bid chairman

“This is an A-League-focused bid,” says Cavallucci. “Brisbane City is an NPL team at the moment, you could sort of call that a second tier, and the level of revenue there at the moment is around $1.5m. An A-League club we’re talking $10m-plus revenue. The step up from second division to first division, it’s a whole different ball game. The level of commercial opportunities is completely different, the exposure is completely different, the infrastructure is completely different and your responsibilities to the game are at another level.”

Promotion and relegation in the current environment, he says, is an argument for “someone who loves football, but is completely non-pragmatic about commercial decisions”.

The current A-League franchises are pushing for expansion but, as Melbourne Victory chairman Anthony Di Pietro said in February, “we must make sure that any new licences do not compromise the marketability or integrity of the competition”. Relegation, says Didulica, “would undermine the value we need to build in the game”. And FFA chief executive David Gallop recently stated that “we need to protect the value of the existing licences in which the current owners have invested”.

It is on this core issue that the expansionists will likely triumph over the traditionalists. It is difficult to see how FFA can “protect the value” of an A-League licence by establishing a national second division – which could potentially draw fans and sponsors away from the top tier – or by introducing the possibility of the licensees being relegated from the A-League. Like it or not, there is a protectionist streak built into the DNA of the competition.

“I’m a massive supporter, philosophically, of promotion and relegation,” says Cavallucci. “Do I think it’s possible, and in the best interests of the game now? Absolutely not. We can’t have promotion and relegation until we have at least 16 to 18 teams in the league.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tomislav Uskok of Sydney United says there is frustration among players in the current system. Photograph: Jeremy Ng/Getty Images

Tomislav Uskok, a 25 year-old Sydney United defender, has played in the NPL in both NSW and Victoria, as well for the Central Coast Mariners in the A-League. He believes that foreign players and full-time professionalism are the major factors separating the A-League from the NPL.

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“There are definitely players in the NPL that can make the step up, and there are teams that can compete against some A-League teams, even without the resources,” says Uskok. “There are a lot of [NPL] players that do put in the hard yards and try to be as professional as possible, but there are limited opportunities for both coaches and players. If there was a more open market it would help the level improve.

“More professional players in the system is going to increase standards, and promotion and relegation would force players to play under different pressures. There is definitely frustration among players not getting an opportunity.”

For Uskok, who works full-time in the construction industry, the creation of a national second division would act as a powerful incentive not only for himself, but also for the future of the clubs that have helped nurture him and his community.

“I’d personally like to play for the clubs that I grew up supporting, in a national competition,” said Uskok. “That would be the highest honour I could have. I’ve supported Melbourne Croatia [Knights] my whole life, even Sydney Croatia [United], and seeing them in a national competition is something I support. I’d love to take my kids to watch the clubs that I grew up supporting.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest FC Brisbane City bid chairman Rob Cavallucci speaks during the bid launch in Brisbane earlier this month. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

In 2007, the former FFA chairman Frank Lowy said that he wanted to “organise the game from the bottom to the top in a homogenous way”. A decade on, that goal still appears as difficult as herding cats.

Cavallucci is hoping that the FC Brisbane City bid will encourage other NPL clubs to follow their example.

“There’s a current process, right now, that’s open to anyone and everyone right across Australia, every club, put up or shut up. Put your bid in now, be a part of the process. If you think you’ve got what it takes, if you think you’ve got the right club and the right backing and the right ideas, put your bid in.

“If you’ve got a commercial argument, if you’ve got a football argument for what you’re doing, stop doing it by antagonising and picking a fight with FFA. Through positive presentation of who you are, demonstrate to the football community, the A-League clubs, the governing body, why you deserve to be there.”

In the coming months, FFA will have to deal with a powerful lobby of A-League franchises that want more say in the running of the game, an army of anxious bidders and an organised, ambitious collective of NPL clubs. Reform of the FFA congress will continue to be pushed by state federations, A-League franchises, PFA and the AAFC. A new financial model for the A-League will need to be negotiated.

“As a matter of football policy, I think we would all like it to start tomorrow, however we need to invest time and effort in creating a robust and strong base, not just reheat what we have in place now,” Didulica says. “We need to test the investment appetite, infrastructure capabilities and fan appetite to design a competition that has a genuine future, as it can’t afford to fail. This planning process needs to start immediately.”