Former West Ham legend Clyde Best was involved with a rival Bermuda bid aiming to get a team in the United Soccer League.
Best, arguably Bermuda's greatest ever footballer, and other bosses at the Football Foundation charity supported a bid from sports entrepreneurs Anthony Witherspoon and Donal Smith.
Their group was beaten out and it is Shaun Goater that will ultimately spearhead Bermuda's first foray into professional football, after the more highly publicized bid from the former Manchester City star and Bermuda national team coaches Paul Scope and Kyle Lightbourne was given the go ahead.
Best accepted the decision gracefully and has thrown his support behind the new Bermuda team, which he said was essential for the development of the sport.
"Football has to be the winner here, not me or anybody else," he said.
"Our main interest is in helping to develop soccer, we don't care who does it. The most important thing is to make sure that it happens.
"We are glad for the guys that are doing it. We are more interested (at the Bermuda Football Foundation) in helping develop young players. Their focus is developing players for the national team.
"Eventually those two things are going to have to go hand in hand."
Tim Holt, vice-president of the USL, said both Bermuda bids had been first class, but ultimately they had to pick one.
He added that the winning franchise had indicated that they wished to be inclusive and said he hoped everybody involved would support the team.
"We would have been in very good shape in either situation but once we determined that it was not feasible for them to work together we had to pick one.
"Our best case scenario would have been for everybody to be working on the same initiative and we still hope that can happen.
"I'd like to see most, if not all, of those individuals involved get behind this initiative in one form or another."
Best shares that view.
"We all said that whoever gets it we would be supportive of it. We have to be supportive because right now football in this country is in such a state. We need something like this to get us excited about the game."
