The New York Cosmos’ appointment of Eric Cantona yesterday was a big deal, or at least that was the impression given by the speed with which the news disseminated across the internet.

A number of England’s national newspapers ran it as the lead sport story on their website, as did the BBC (once the drama of Roger Federer’s Australian Open victory had subsided), and the name Cantona was trending on Twitter.

Not bad for someone who – as football author Stuart Fuller so concisely put it – has been appointed Director of Football for a club with no stadium and no players.

Now, of course the Cosmos hope that situation is only temporary, as they look to become the 20^th team to enter the MLS (following next year’s inductees Montreal Impact into the fray).

As well as Cantona, the club which once boasted Pele and Franz Beckenbauer among their playing staff could already count former MLS stars Giovanni Savarese and Cobi Jones (not to mention Pele himself) among an increasingly-influential stable of backroom staff.

On top of that, chairman Paul Kemsley, vice-chairman Terry Byrne and director Rick Parry have a wealth of Premier League experience behind the scenes.

While other ‘financial fair play’-style measures have attempted to level the playing field as much as possible in the MLS, a certain level of clout – either in terms of money or respect and notoriety – might be essential for any club looking to take their place among the elite. At least, this seems to be what Kemsley and his staff are gambling on.

Such a gamble would be vindicated if the sway and standing of men like Cantona and ‘David Beckham’s best mate’ Byrne provides a framework whereby in the space of three years the club can achieve parity with clubs who have toiled for more than a decade to reach their current level after building the MLS up to its current level of acclaim.

With the constraints currently placed on the league designed to maintain a sense of equality and prevent celebrity overriding competition (although some will say a certain Los Angeles club is already challenging this concept), it is important to ensure the celebrity of the Cosmos and its past legacy does not turn the involvement of the proposed class of 2012 into a circus.

After already avoiding such an eventuality during Ruud Gullit’s time at LA Galaxy, there is no doubt that Don Garber and the league’s organisers know full well how to ride out a media storm, but the Cosmos – even in their current guise – could prove a step too far in the long run.

The issue, I suppose, is that no one club should become more important than the league, and no league should ever see their reliance on one club go beyond a certain point. While there is no reason to doubt the ability of the Cosmos to conform to standards and become ‘just another’ MLS franchise, past form may remain in the minds of sceptics wary of another Harlem Globetrotters of soccer, which is what the club had come to represent in Pele’s playing days.

Nor, indeed, should sympathy be coupled with a misplaced responsibility to a club’s heritage, as was the case with two Italian clubs in the last decade.

When Napoli went bankrupt in 2004 and reformed in an entirely different guise, by rights the new club ought to have been required to work their way through the football pyramid. But the Italian football federation installed them in Serie C1, allowing them to return to the top-flight in 2007 and override the ruling (made upon their bankruptcy) preventing them from retaining their name and history.

This was arguably made possible by an even greater bending of the rules one year earlier, when Fiorentina – demoted to Serie C2 after bankruptcy in 2002 – were permitted to bypass one rung of the ladder after an initial promotion.

Admittedly in this case the double-promotion came partly as a result of Serie B being expanded to 24 clubs from 20, but the only reason for Fiorentina being named among the additional clubs to take their place in the larger second tier was their ‘sports merits’ (i.e. their legacy).

While no one would advocate a set of fans losing their club or a city losing its proud sporting tradition, it is equally important that the safety net is not so strong as to leave no fear of repercussion if and when a club oversteps the mark.

As the New York Cosmos continue to develop a powerful and influential squad (and we haven’t even got started on the players they might look to attract if accepted to the MLS) the governing bodies must keep close tabs on the situation and be prepared for all outcomes before admitting them into the league. With a competition still in its youth, a regression to the circus of the 1970s could be devastating.