"The message from the A-League clubs also needs to be clearly understood. The professional game must be transformed now in order to make it something that can be invested in.

"The clubs are the only investors ready to provide the capital required to see our domestic elite professional game flourish."

He added: "Combined, the clubs will lose more than $25m this year and we and the game will have little to show for it.

"If we are to turn the professional game around and fulfil its potential, the clubs will need to invest more than $120m over the next four years. Only in that way can the value of the League’s broadcast rights be maintained or grown at the end of the current cycle.

"We cannot be expected to continue to financially prop up something that we do not own and that is managed by a third party that is failing to perform.”

The working group's report published yesterday was still unclear on the the final ownership of the new A-League structure, and said the EPL model originally favoured by owners was unsuitable for the Australian landscape.

But the APFCA wants to see action sooner rather than later and an end to any stalling tactics by the FFA over the split.

Lederer added: “The FFA and the stakeholders of the Australian game need to decide, and do so quickly.

"Do you want a domestic professional competition that maintains us as an advancing football nation?

"Or in four years’ time do you want to go back to the days when our elite player pathway was based entirely overseas?

"That is the decision to be made in the coming weeks. The game is at a critical decision point and the clock is ticking.”