The Smith Review today made key recommendations to improve the state of the game in Australia, which were mostly welcomed by Professional Football Australia.

But its central finding that the salary cap should be mmediately frozen or even slashed to cut costs to owners has come under immediate fire from the PFA.

The report said A-League salaries cost 40 percent of the income the A-League generated, versus just 20 percent in rival codes.

But the review also said the A-League and Socceroos should remain under the central control of the FFA - contrary to the Government's 2003 Crawford Report -  until the local competition was stable enough to stand on its own two feet.

And the PFA insists that if the Smith Review keeps the two bodies combined, then Socceroo AND A-League salaries should be combined and then calculated in terms of overall revenue.

"As the Socceroos take home between 6.8 percent and 10.12 percent of the revenue they generate, the overall share of Socceroos and A-League player payments of combined FFA and A-League revenue ranges between 21.36 percent and 29.34 percent," said PFA chief executive Brendan Schwab.

"This is consistent with the benchmarks referred to by Mr Smith and sees A-League players join Major League Soccer players as the only player groups that have voluntarily agreed to cap their earnings."

The PFA only recently completed their most recent collective bargaining agreement pay deal with the FFA for this season and next's salary cap.

And Schwab pointed out the following deal - and setting the next salary cap figure - would not be hammered out until after the current TV rights deal has been re-negotiated.

"As the next A-League CBA will be negotiated when the new broadcast rights agreement is in place, it is clearly premature to suggest what player payments should be in that environment," said Schwab.

“Given the positive messages in the review, it would be regrettable if they were subsumed by what appears to have been an unfortunate focus on freezing or even reducing A-League player payments based on an error in the review concerning the players’ share of football revenue in Australia.

“A reduction in player payments is exactly the wrong direction for the professional game in Australia. Stepping down this path would prevent the achievement by FFA of its strategy to make Australia a top ten football nation by 2015.

“Instead, now is the time for the game to focus on building the game’s revenue streams especially through greater conversion of the millions of football fans and participants into fans of the Socceroos and A-League clubs."