Bermuda's road to the World Cup in 2006 is set to begin in February.

Subject to approval from both soccer's regional governing body, CONCACAF and world governing body FIFA, it has been recommended that qualifying for the event in Germany begins on February 18.

However, the schedule has changed from one adopted earlier this year, in which all first-round byes were eliminated meaning teams such as the USA could have begun their campaign as early as January 17 and played up to 20 games. Under the new formula submitted to FIFA earlier this week, the US team will play 18 games, starting on June 12 or 13.

"We heard from a number of nations, be them large and small, who had issues with the first round," Chuck Blazer, CONCACAF's secretary general, said yesterday. "The dates we had in January were not FIFA-approved international game dates. We listened to the members and came up with the new recommendation."

Under the new format, 20 Caribbean nations, including Bermuda, will play home-and-away, total-goals series in the Caribbean portion of the preliminary round, with games on February 18 and March 31.

The ten winners will advance along with Belize and Nicaragua to the mixed-zones portion of the round, and those 12 nations will play home-and-away series against the 12 teams that made it in the semi-finals of qualifying for the 2002 World Cup, among them the United States.

Those games will be played on June 12-13 and June 19-20.

The 12 survivors will be divided into three semi-final groups, and each team will play six games from August 18 to November 17. The top two teams in each group will advance to the finals, to be played from February 9 to October 12, 2005.

In the finals, the first three teams qualify for the 32-nation field at the 2006 tournament in Germany and the number four team will advance to a play-off against a team from another region, possibly the number four team from Asia.

CONCACAF's proposal must be approved by its executive committee, which meets on Tuesday in Miami, and by FIFA's executive committee, which meets in Frankfurt, Germany, on December 3, two days before the World Cup draw.

Also yesterday, Blazer and the US Soccer Federation said the United States had turned down an invitation to play in next summer's Copa America, the championship of South America.