But the pressure it has put on Football Federation Australia to give clubs a bigger say in how the A-League is run has paid dividends.

A-League teams have long agitated for a greater role in determining the rules and regulations that govern their competition, insisting that they should have more input in determining the future direction of the league and the way it is administered.

The FFA, having been put under the spotlight in Sydney earlier this week by officials from FIFA and its Asian regional body, the Asian Football Confederation, has agreed to "enlarge its membership" to "include a broader representation of stakeholders".

That should mean that at a formal level there will be club representation on a board that, up to now, has been viewed as a closed shop for the incumbent powerbrokers.

The language it used in a media statement issued following the meetings would indicate that the Steven Lowy-led FFA is not particularly thrilled at being forced to change its structural model to accommodate FIFA's demands, but make concessions it has.

It has agreed to make the changes " in-principle" – with a March 2017 implementation date – after two days of talks to outline "potential changes to FFA's governance structure to keep pace with the evolution of the game in Australia and align FFA with international football governing statutes".

That carefully constructed phraseology admits two things: that the game in this country is rapidly evolving with fresh demands for change coming in a number of areas, and that the way the elite competition in Australia is set up differs greatly from the rest of the world.

The AFC might have wanted to put the blowtorch on the FFA because it was unhappy that Australia did not toe the regional line in the most recent elections for a new FIFA president. The FFA backed first Prince Ali of Jordan and, when he was eliminated, switched its support to Swiss Italian Gianni Infantino rather than the AFC's preferred candidate, Sheik Salman al-Khalifa of Bahrain.

But the fact that its pressure during the talks in Sydney has achieved some concession to the demands of the clubs is a positive move.

For many years there have been growing demands for an independent commission to administer the A-League and run the competition as a separate stand-alone business from the FFA.

That would operate in tandem with, but independent of, the governing body, with the FFA responsible for the national teams, grass roots administration and development and the clubs free to find their own sponsors and negotiate TV deals.

The FFA has historically argued that by lumping all facets of the game together and packaging the Socceroos as part of broadcast negotiations it can gain a larger sum for all, an argument that has less and less traction with A-League clubs who see their competition as the bread and butter of the game in this country and certainly its largest revenue generator.

The agitation from the clubs is all part of a wider debate that is being driven by almost every stakeholder in the game bar the FFA board.

Questions have and are being asked about the desirability or otherwise of the creation of a second division, the need for promotion and relegation as a stimulus for investment and game development, the prosecution of the next TV rights deal and even the existence of the salary cap.

Many within the game believe clubs should no longer be forced to limit their wages or, in fact, pay up to a 90 or 95 per cent floor level so that even poorly supported and performing teams have to pay nearly as much to their players as successful clubs with large fan bases and bigger revenues.

Given the opacity and lack of transparency usually employed by organisations such as FIFA and the AFC it will indeed be ironic if they do flush out and speed up further debate on the way Australian soccer is run. But however it comes about, the debate is needed.