Larry Mussenden has been on the campaign trail drumming up support for his bid to be the new president of Concacaf.

The Bermuda Football Association president visited Jamaica last weekend, heads to St Martin tomorrow, and has spent the past couple of days in Zurich ahead of next month’s election.

Mussenden is one of three men vying for the top job in the region, with Victor Montagliani, the Canadian Soccer Association president, his main opponent.

Gordon Derrick, the general secretary of the Antigua and Barbuda FA, is also believed to be running, while Mark Rodriguez, from Guyana, is understood to have dropped out of the race.

Many consider Montagliani, who is believed to already have secured the backing of Mexico and the United States, to be the front runner, a feeling Mussenden does not share.

“I don’t consider him to be the front runner, I consider myself to be the front runner,” he said during an appearance on SportsMax. “I’m going to ask the United States and Mexico to vote for me, and I think I’ll be able to persuade them to do so.”

During his television stint on the SportsMax Zone programme, Mussenden was asked about his candidacy and whether being from a country without a football pedigree would be held against him.

Jeffrey Webb, the former Concacaf president who has been charged with fraud, is from the Cayman Islands.

“You can’t blame a good candidate for coming from a small country,” Mussenden said.

“Bermuda has a very good footballing pedigree. We may not be a large country, we may not have won a World Cup, but we have had organised football in Bermuda since 1928, we have been a member of Fifa since 1962, and there were times in the past when we have beaten Mexico and the United States.”

Mussenden also denied that the job of leading a region that has been rocked by several arrests in the US Department of Justice’s corruption inquiry was a “poisoned chalice.”

“This is a region that is rich in tradition, rich in football, we have large countries, small countries, different languages, but all are brought together by football.

“You say poisoned chalice, I don’t think that is a poisoned chalice.

“I think we can have a great professional staff in the office, a great executive, and hopefully I will win the election and with a key leadership team we can achieve a lot of great things.”