On Sunday evening, James Kwesi Appiah, the globe-trotting head coach of Sudan, received a letter from Confederation of African Football’s head of legal affairs. It set him a very immediate deadline.
He was expecting the letter. Appiah, a former World Cup coach with his native Ghana, had been holding two incompatible positions - his role with Sudan and a seat on the executive committee of Ghana’s Football Association.
As Ghana play Sudan twice in the next six days in qualifying for next year’s Africa Cup of Nations, it was necessary to relinquish one in order to safeguard against any suggestion the integrity of the fixtures might be compromised. He instantly stepped down from his role at the Ghanaian FA.
Being head coach of Sudan tends to presents far greater obstacles than that, as in his 13 months in the job, Appiah has come to learn.
He also appreciates that a spirit of cooperation, from across sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb and the Middle East is what is sustaining Sudanese football during the country’s brutal civil war. A small piece of administrative protection against possible sporting conflict-of-interest counted as a minor inconvenience. He co-operated.
And then he returned immediately to the big challenges. For Sudan’s coach and his players, each day presents new ones, above all concerns for the families of players in a country where tens of thousands have lost their lives during the fighting and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
There are huge practical issues when "home" fixtures both for Appiah’s team and Sudan’s leading clubs must be played outside Sudan. There are questions of how to compensate for the irregular competitive football for many in the national team while the Sudanese league remains suspended and inactive.
And yet, despite all this, the Sudan who line up against Ghana in the Accra Sports Stadium on Thursday are sitting top of their World Cup qualifying group, above Senegal, the 2022 African champions. In Afcon qualifying, they are currently in a position that would take them to the finals in Morocco; Ghana, the four-time African champions, in third spot, are not.
Since Appiah, who was Ghana’s head coach at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, took command of the Sundanese 13 months ago, he has overseen just one competitive defeat - against Angola in Afcon qualifying - and, overall, has six victories from 10 games in charge.
It is a rousing momentum, a bright light for a suffering country, and Appiah has set a clear target for millions of Sudanese to look forward to: a place at the 2026 World Cup, a tournament the country has never reached the final stages of. “You cannot imagine how much happiness a World Cup participation would bring to all of Sudan,” he told Fifa.com.
The allies in this effort to keep football going, in spite of conflict, have been many. Appiah’s most concentrated work with his players now tends to take place in Saudi Arabia, where an alternative base, away from the violence in Khartoum, has been available to Sudan’s national squad effectively on a full-time basis. The coach is grateful for a site where he can anchor his preparations.
Closer neighbours have provided temporary "homes" for players who form the backbone of the national squad. The top Sudanese clubs, Al Hilal and Al Merrikh of Omdurman have strived, even without a functioning domestic league, to honour their commitments in pan-African competition.
In this season’s Caf Champions League, they played early-round matches in Juba, capital of South Sudan. Political relations between the two countries since South Sudan’s independence in 2011 have often been tense, but the reception given to the clubs from north of the border in August was warm and welcoming.
As was the gratitude - although it only extends so far. Appiah’s national team are in the same World Cup qualifying group as South Sudan. They beat them 3-0 in Juba earlier this year.
Mauritania, who reached the knockout phase of the last Afcon finals, are in the same group, already beaten 2-0 by Sudan. But their Football Federation have reached out, too. Al Hilal and Al Merrikh were invited, in a rare gesture, to join the Mauritanian top division for the current season, enabling them to play a full calendar of fixtures in the absence of a functioning Sudanese league.
CAF gave their blessing, an emergency war-time situation overriding the reluctance of all football governing bodies to allow clubs from outside a country to join its league. The two Sudanese clubs-in-exile have, predictably, shot up straight into first and second place in the Mauritanian table.
There has been significant aid from elsewhere in the Maghreb. Libyan football, besides providing a stadium for Sudan matches - next week’s visit by Ghana takes place in Benghazi - took the decision to exempt Sudanese players from its normal limitations on the number of non-Libyans allowed to play for its club teams in domestic competitions.
That opened a channel for some of Sudan’s footballers to move and earn a living there. In the 27-strong squad Appiah has picked for the Ghana contests, seven are with Libyan clubs.
The squad also includes a handful of professionals who have been expatriates for most of their lives, brought in over the last year or so as Sudan launched a programme to locate and persuade footballers from the country’s global diaspora to join a project that has a World Cup place as its mission.
Defender Abdulrahman Kuku, born in Cairo to Sudanese parents, grew up mostly in Australia, where, after studying in the USA, he was pursuing his football career until his first outings for the Sudan side persuaded Al Merrikh and, later, Al Ittihad of Libya to offer him playing contracts.
Brothers Mohamed and Abo Eisa, who moved to London from Khartoum as children and then made their way up the lower leagues of English football, have both registered their first goals for Sudan since being called up for the first time last year. “Playing for my country, and scoring for my country, has been the best experience of my life,” said Mohamed Eisa after he marked his debut with a goal.
By this time next week, the prospect of travelling to a major tournament, the Afcon, may look very real indeed. Were Sudan to beat Ghana in Accra and again in Sudan’s borrowed ‘home’ of Benghazi, the gap between Appiah’s team and his compatriots would stretch to eight points, with two matchdays remaining.
Ghana will be shy of full strength. They are missing injured Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey, and have won just two matches of their last 11, a run that included the disastrous first-phase exit from the last Afcon in January, after which Chris Hughton was replaced as head coach by his predecessor Otto Addo. “There is no way we will underestimate Sudan,” said Addo. “They are very good and I respect Kwesi Appiah so much for what he has done for this Sudan team.”
