FIFA delegates Noda Aklalkatsi and Luca Nicola, along with AFC delegate Ravi Kumar have concluded three days of meetings in Sydney this week with the game’s stakeholders including the APFCA (aka the A-League clubs), the PFA, the FFA, and the AAFC (representing NPL clubs).

The delegates arrived in Sydney to collect submissions and listen to the stakeholders with the aim of forming a Congress Review Working Group, to finally resolve the major governance issue following the breakdown of attempts to agree on the model of an extended FFA Congress.

The task now is for the delegates, now back in Zurich, and for FIFA to stipulate the terms of reference for the working group including the composition, mandate, and timeline. A decision is expected in two to three weeks.

The delegates were tight-lipped about any of these questions when they flew out after their round of meetings. But the A-League clubs left little doubt about both their grievances and what they want to see from the working group, by publicising its submission in a lengthy document.

In a scathing attack on the FFA, the APFCA’s document claims that the sole focus on the issue of a new congress, “has created an artificial impediment to the much needed governance reform of the FFA.”

It claims that a fundamental problem is that the FFA is not an association as required by FIFA, but rather it is an unlisted public company which enables it to use Australian corporation law to avoid “implementation of the FIFA-required congress model.”

It has also been able to resist the APFCA’s push for greater transparency of its financial records and its financial reporting. The APFCA has also criticised the FFA’s claim to independence pointing out that its board members have been elected unopposed.

The document argues that the FFA has effectively disqualified itself from participation in the working group and has recommended that the composition should consist of three member federations, two A-League clubs, and one PFA representative, chaired by an independent chairperson.

Interestingly it doesn’t specify which of the member federations should be included. There is also no place for the AAFC in the working group, adding that a consultative role for the AAFC is appropriate.

Finally, the document statement includes a dire warning about the “potential impending catastrophic collapse of the professional game in Australia” if action is not taken quickly to resolve the crisis.