The foreign stars – men such as Melbourne Victory's Ola Toivonen,Melbourne City's Craig Noone,Markel Sussaeta and Florin Berenguer and Western United's Alessandro Diamanti – can all be asked by their clubs to remain in Australia as long as their wages are being paid while their contract exists.
Toivonen has already expressed his wish to return to Sweden,while Western star Diamanti is out of contract at season's end. He had indicated he wanted to stay in Australia,but that was before the coronavirus pandemic wrought havoc around the planet and plunged his native Italy into crisis.
The FFA has said,however unlikely the prospect is,that they will look to try to restart the competition towards the end of April,which makes it more likely that overseas players will be asked to remain in Australia until the league is officially shut down for good.
Most foreigners are players who have made their money in the big leagues of Europe earlier in their footballing lives and are reaching the end of their careers.
Any curtailment to their careers will not be as grievous as it is to younger out-of-contract Australian players who will not have been on large pay packets for the bulk of their time in the A-League,where the average wage is $130,000 to $140,000 a year.
That average is distorted by the big-money marquee deals for the likes of Diamanti and Panagiotis Kone at Western,Socceroo frontman Jamie Maclaren (who is on a multi-year deal) at Melbourne City,and Toivonen at Victory.