It will be a case of home, sweet home for Bermuda's international footballers in the future if the Island's football chiefs have their way.

Bermuda Football Association second vice-president Robert Calderon believes travelling overseas for anything other than the World Cup makes neither financial sense nor has major benefits for the game domestically.

To that end the former national coach believes less emphasis should be placed on the Caribbean region's main knockout competition, the Copa Carib, and more on attracting teams here to the new National Stadium.

"We are in a period of trying to figure out what makes sense," said Calderon.

"We have to involve ourselves in two competitions over a four-year period in order to remain members of FIFA.

"One of those competitions must be the World Cup. Although people believe it is foolhardy, in order to get the FIFA grant — $1 million over a four-year period — we have to be involved. It is a significant amount of money and it pays a lot of bills.

"The other competition that we have discussed and agreed we should be involved in is the Under-17 World Cup. Qualification for that will come up, I believe, at some point next year.

"At all other levels what we want to do is stay away from world championships and even the Copa Carib, one, because, to be honest, we don't have the money, two, it comes at a time that is disruptive to the league programme, and three, quite frankly we are not getting the best bang for our buck."

Calderon said the only time it would be beneficial to play in the Copa Carib would be if the Island was pitted against the premier teams.

"Unless you are playing against Jamaica and Trinidad you really are not improving your football by playing in the West Indies," he said.

"It costs a lot of money to travel there and plus they change the dates and it just becomes a scheduling nightmare.

"No disrespect to the teams down there, but it makes more sense to us to spend money and bring teams in from the United States, Canada or even the West Indies and have them play against not only our national team but hopefully the league champions.

"We would hope to get maybe three games out of them rather than have 18 or 20 players travelling all over the world.

"We are going to spend less time trying to create an elite team and try to spread our wings and have as many players exposed to international opposition as we possibly can. The best way to do that is to bring teams to Bermuda."

Developing the game to a level where Bermuda is competitive in World Cup qualifiers will take time, but Calderon says there's no rush.

"If we can get the director of youth development in place by March or even sooner, maybe even January, realistically it will take nothing less than three years to see the net effect of what we are trying to do," he said.

"To suggest that we can return even close to what we used to be in a period shorter than three years is foolhardy. It is not something we want to do. To do that you would have to concentrate on training players. That to me is putting all your eggs in one basket and that has proved in the past not to be a very smart idea. All you have to do is have one hiccough and your football is heading in the wrong direction.

"It will take a little longer and we will try to spread the net a little wider and the only way we can do that, I think, is by concentrating heavily on improving the domestic game. Hopefully the pool of talent grows and the international game takes care of itself."