Ghana could well qualify for next year's nation's Cup but Bukhard Ziese's days here are numbered.

This is supposed to be the most important game yet for Ghana football but there are few who are looking forward to Sunday's tie with much hope.

A team depleted by player pullouts, in-fighting between coach and GFA officials, and the resolve of the Rwandese themselves to qualify for their first ever African nation's cup has made this an incredibly difficult assignment for the Black Stars.

Yet as Black Stars coach Bukhard Ziese prepared to travel to Kigali with his team last Wednesday, he was doing so with a heavy heart and with the attitude of a man already feeling the strain of his second stint in Ghana.

"I have always been confident but given the present situation I am not too sure if we are going to win", he said.

The situation Ziese refers to has already dampened the hearts of many of Ghana's leading football followers.

The country's leading foreign-based players who Bukhard insist are the lifeline to our football deadline decided to shun the Kigali assignment.

Any country lucky enough to be blessed with talents like Derek Boateng, Michael Essien, Yakubu Abubakari and Kofi Amponsah should be leading the pack in African football.

But this is Ghana where players decide somehow not to respond to national calls and where players are all too willing to snub the nation to state their case.

No one has been able to tell us exactly what is wrong with the players and exactly what they want. But rumours are rife that the players are protesting against Bukhard Ziese.

There are a number of people close to the team including some of the players involved in the stay away who find the German too abusive in his comments to be dealt with.

And even among football officials, Bukhard seems to be making all the wrong moves. His insistence on playing Edward Ansah did not alienate him from the fans - it made him look an incredibly bad coach in the eyes of the Ghana Football Association officials.

Eventually Eddie Ansah pulled out of the team, but again, even that is proving a hard sell for people to believe. The common wisdom in the corridors of power is that the ageing goalie was impressed upon by football officials to step aside.

And in similar fashion, GFA chairman Ben Koufie got his way with Isaac Boakye. The player who stayed out of the Ghana-Uganda match with an injury reported for training last Monday only to be sacked by Bukhard after he had done almost two hours of jogging.

Koufie was mad when he heard the news. Immediately, he called the player on his cell phone and ordered that he returns to camp. Ziese given the absence of the players he had wanted, couldn't say no.

But he did speak his mind in a frank manner before departing Accra last Wednesday. "I sit here and they dump players on me. I can't believe it."

But still he must go to Kigali, get the draw we want or risk losing his job.

No one would take the absence of Bukhard's darling and superior foreign based players for an excuse, not least FA chairman Ben Koufie, who was waxing lyrical about how confident the mood was last Wednesday. "We have done everything to ensure we qualify. The players have been told how much this means and they have also been adequately motivated for the match."

But without the main key players Ziese would have loved to have, defeat looks a high probability. Koufie won't buy that.

"I am sure for the coach, the absence of the players is a big setback in terms of preparations. But we can't cry over spilt milk. We have to make the most of what we have."

Captain Stephen Appiah believes the team would. "We are going to Rwanda with only victory on our minds", he says. All of us understand the task at stake. We know things are critical, that there would be no room for errors and that we must give off hundred per cent on the day."

Appiah has stayed true to the Black Stars and is itching to display his stuff, which no other club than Juventus admired on the biggest stage in African football.

That he is the in party is no surprise, but after the massive demonisation of Samuel Osei Kuffuor and Augustine Arhinful, isn't it exemplary that they travelled with the team to Kigali when we needed them most?

It's a worthy thing the two players did and something that those who decided to stay away must pick vital lessons from. As Kwabena Yeboah wrote in his Africa Sports column yesterday: "Our players ought to take a critical look at themselves and tell us in the face whether they believe they are being fair to the nation."

Certainly, not but in the same breadth, we would all need to take a long and hard look at Bukhard Ziese and decide with all the urgency whether he is worth the tag of Black Stars coach, win or lose in Kigali.

I suspect not from my heart but from my head that we would get the ticket we want in Rwanda and take our place among African football elites in Tunisia next year.