If you're expecting Canada's men's national team to play more often in the near future, you're out of luck.

The John Herdman-led side, which will face the U.S. Virgin Islands next week to kick off qualifying for the CONCACAF Nations League, only has four matches on the schedule between now and March 2019. And it'll stay that way, according to the coach.

Since Herdman took over the reins of the 79th-ranked team at the beginning of 2018, Canada has only played a single match. That was back in March, when the Canadians recorded a 1-0 win over New Zealand in a neutral site friendly in Spain.

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In the interim, Herdman says a lot has been going on behind the scenes as he attempts to re-organize a program that hasn't participated in the World Cup since 1986.

"One of the things that we said that we would commit to was doing things with higher quality," Herdman told reporters by telephone on Thursday. "[Bringing] the elements of tactical and technical analysis that might have been missing. Bringing the mental performance aspects that might have been missing."

The English-born coach stressed quality over quantity in the team's preparation under his guidance thus far, especially as Canada was not involved with this summer World Cup in Russia.

"For me in this stage it's doing more with higher quality with the best players, so creating an environment and events that the top players really want to be involved in rather than skimping and scraping on a camp with staff missing or not being able to service the players at the level that they receive at clubs," he said.

Herdman also pointed to the prohibitive cost of getting players together for camps, especially with other programs under the Canadian Soccer Association umbrella also needing consideration. He noted the six-figure expense of previous training camps — Herdman quoted the recent Toulon U-21 tournament in France as costing the CSA upwards of $400,000 — may not always be worth their bloated price tags. Add in the new regional tournament, and it becomes even more of a balancing act, the coach said.

"You bring in cost of Nations League, this is new," Herdman said. "In the past Canada could maybe pick and choose what windows they played in to balance off opportunities for youth development and other aspects. Now we're committed to every single FIFA window to play matches where there's significant travel in some of these events. You have to start thinking about a lot of European players traveling over 24 hours to get to St. Kitts and no longer can you put them on an economy flight.

"So there's some real detail has to go into the planning for this, even from the coffers of Canada Soccer, to understand how we maximize the opportunities we play."

Aside from the financial considerations, Herdman feels that the short windows available for international play are not conducive to implementing his ideas as the team transitions to life under the successful former women's national team boss.

"I'll get four training sessions to prepare a team, and then [if] you add in another game to that it sort of minimizes your impact of bringing that tactical cohesion as you're laying some of your tactical foundation," he said.

Despite the relative dearth of games for Canadian fans to plan for, Herdman said that the team's schedule will get heavier as it progresses toward bigger matches in the coming months and years.

"There will be a time when we go to back-to-back games in our windows to ensure that we're preparing for the Hex, that we don't fall short and just play in one-game windows in all of the FIFA windows we have to play in, [and] we get that experience of having a tough, tight turnaround," Herdman said.

However, don't expect things to change until after Canada completes its obligations in Nations League qualifying.

"There's a real thought going into this," Herdman explained. "There's a deliberate approach to how we're structuring the delivery of our content over these four matches to elevate the team [to be] ready for [next summer's] Gold Cup, and at this stage we'll be sticking to one-game windows through this period of time."