The former Australian Rugby Union chief said the organisation wanted to lure national team regulars home for the second year of the league, starting next August.
He wanted to use FFA revenue, much of which is generated by the Socceroos, for the plan, in which each A-League club would receive one player.
He said the clubs would pay a base wage within the salary cap, with the FFA supplementing the players' pay packets to bring them up to European levels.
Most matches will be played on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday evenings, but O'Neill said the A-League would also experiment with Thursday nights and stage one Monday night game. None will be played at the same time and no team will play more than twice in a row away from home.
To encourage attacking football, in what is a competitive sports marketplace, it is likely teams will get bonus points if they score more than a certain number of goals in a match.
O'Neill only expects average attendances in the first season of the A-League to be a modest 10,000 per game.
