A-League boss Greg O'Rourke has indicated the salary cap will be 'softened' as the competition looks to reward clubs for producing home-grown players.
As it stands, only marquees are counted outside of the salary cap with many clubs left in a difficult position when it comes to holding on to young talent.
While O'Rourke believes the A-League still requires a salary cap, he concedes changes will be made to allow for more financial flexibility.
"In the near future...we will start to soften the cap," O'Rourke told The World Game.
"It was put in place in the beginning to make sure everyone was able to have an opportunity to win.
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"What we’ve found now after 10 years and after the academies have been set up that there’s some things we can do inside the cap to incentivise clubs to spend more money outside of the cap if they spend more money on their home-grown players.
"I think what you’ll see is this migration from a hard cap, which at the moment is really a cap plus marquees, to a cap plus marquees plus incentives for home-grown loyalty players and then a little bit more outside of the cap.
"What I don’t think we’re ready for just yet it is no cap."
Along with a loosening of the salary cap, O'Rourke also revealed there are plans to introduce transfer fees between A-League clubs.
"Why we don’t have transfer fees between clubs at this point of time is because there was a want to keep all the money that’s going into the system," he said.
"The New Leagues Working Group is working with clubs on a blueprint that will start to introduce financial transfers between A-League clubs."
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