IN most other countries, tradition dictates that before make-or-break ties, fans and the press waste the entire build-up obsessively pondering team selection and the coach’s tactical formations.

In Ghana, things are done a tad differently.

Leading Group D with nine points, a massive five ahead of closest rivals Mali, the Black Stars play a most vital qualifier against Sudan this Sunday.

But in Accra, a city throbbing with soccer opinion, all pre-match talk has been consumed by a rather more curious point of discussion than the lighter matters of where Michael Essien, Sulley Muntari et al might be deployed by Serb coach, Milovan Rajevac.

Every one of Accra’s four million inhabitants has been debating the national disgrace that almost occurred when the Ghana Football Association (GFA) momentarily contemplated scheduling this historic match in Kumasi.

Ghana-Sudan is a match which must secure this football-mad nation its second successive World Cup invite.

And for Accranians, no other city is more deserving of the anticipated lap of honour than Ghana’s capital. That the GFA even made public its desire to have the match held in Kumasi is considered an act of near-betrayal just inches removed from high treason.

In all fairness, though, the GFA had its merits.

Ghana needs a win against Sudan to ensure an entire nation reaches the Promised Land. Problem is, that’s exactly the kind of pressure-cooker atmosphere that has exposed Accra’s passionate fans in the past. For all their passion, Accra supporters are prone to the occupational hazard of most die-hards’ fickle temperaments. Unlike their Kumasi counterparts, Accra fans have been known to swing from all-worshipping faithful to scorn-dripping critics of their own team depending on whether matters are going on-pitch.

It is Accra fans who dispatched death threats to Baffour Gyan’s family when the striker went through an ill-timed goal-scoring drought at the last Nations’ Cup. It is the same fans who declared Essien persona non grata within Ghana and a pariah in the diaspora when the Chelsea star dared decline an invite to the Black Stars due to an injury.

Such are the reservations the Black Stars have about Accra fans that on-street opinion thinks it is with the encouragement of the senior players that the switch to Kumasi was contemplated by the GFA. That the move was dropped means the Black Stars have no other choice but to submerge Sudan or else…