The City Football Group, which has turned Melbourne Heart into Melbourne City, got the first return on its investment when it drew its best crowd for a fixture against Newcastle Jets on Sunday. This is a game which, not that long ago, pulled fewer than 3000 fans. Memberships going into the season were up 53 per cent, and most of them showed for the first home game of the season. The crowd against the Jets was a relatively impressive 15,717.

The Villa effect has plenty to do with that. City Football Group needed to make a statement on its entry into the Australian market, and it has certainly done it. I still find it remarkable that Villa is even here.

Forget the A-League, there's never ever been a foreigner of Villa's currency in our game. Seven other World Cup winners have played for Australian clubs, some for as little as a couple of games. But Bobby Charlton (Newcastle KB United), Martin Peters (Frankston Pines), Osvaldo Ardiles (St George), Francesco Graziani (APIA-Leichhardt), Romario (Adelaide United), Juninho (Sydney FC) and Alessandro Del Piero (Sydney FC) didn't walk straight out of a World Cup to come here.

Villa did, of course. As if we need reminding. He scored against the Socceroos in Curitiba, and in his next game he scored against Sydney FC at Allianz Stadium. Villa could have been lining up for any big club in the world right now. Liverpool, Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Juventus – take your pick. Instead he signed for New York City, and is using his guest stint with Melbourne City effectively as his Major League Soccer pre-season. We'll take playing second fiddle to the Americans, for now.

This is what CFG boss Ferran Soriano told the London Sunday Telegraph in August when quizzed about Manchester City's foray into the global market, which also includes a minority stake in Japanese side Yokohama F. Marinos: "We can offer players an extensive career. At 18 years old maybe a player can't play for [Manchester] City, but he could play for New York, and at 32 he will go to Melbourne. Our objective is to develop this."

So the Americans get the up-and-comers, and we get the veterans. I'm not sure what we should make of that. That the MLS is a career-booster and the A-League is a career-ender?

Whichever way you look at it, it's incumbent on the A-League in general, and Melbourne City in particular, to convince CFG to balance the approach. Watching the evolution of a future star can be just as enjoyable as watching the last lights of a fading one. Much will depend on what impression the A-League leaves on Villa and his co-stars Damien Duff and Robert Koren, and what they report back to head office. Judging by Duff's effusive praise leading into the Jets game, the initial signs are encouraging.

There will be many tests of CFG's commitment and understanding of what is required to make the Melbourne City experiment work. The first indications are promising. Fixing up the training base at La Trobe University. Walking out in the season-opener in the strip of Melbourne Heart – an acknowledgement that they have taken over an existing club and not created a new one. And there's the generosity in affording us the privilege of watching a master such as Villa at work.

But this project won't be judged by what happens in the next few weeks, or months. The fear remains that the English Premier League instinct will eventually kick in, and the likes of Soriano will simply choose to develop Melbourne City as Manchester City-lite. A feeder club, a nursery club, a branch office.

The challenge for CFG is to ignore gut instinct and appreciate – truly appreciate – that this country already has a proud, and educated, football culture. One to build on, as they have done with the legacy of the Heart. Hopefully what we've seen so far is what we'll see for years to come. Fingers crossed.

Melbourne City as a stand-alone club, benefiting from the knowledge, connections, and wealth of CFG? Brilliant. Melbourne City as a pallid version of Manchester City, a Trojan horse for global commercial deals, an EPL branding exercise, and a dumping ground for washed-up pros? Disaster. If they get that wrong this project is doomed to failure, and everyone loses in the end.