If the purpose of the Black Stars – Tunisia friendly match in Accra on Wednesday was the Football Association’s contribution to cool down political tension in the country, then it achieved its purpose. A few hours after the match, it became the topic for discussion around the country and it was headline news in the media albeit for wrong reasons.

The verdict was that it was a lousy match. The Black Stars did not exhibit any individual brilliance or polished team work and fans went home disappointed.

Serbian coach Milovan Rajevac, believes it was a useful exercise because it gave him the opportunity to try new faces. He is convinced that with time he would be able to assemble a good squad.

Most keen observers of the football scene however think it may be too late in the day to start building a team for the World Cup and the Cup of Nations. Veteran sports journalist Joe Aggrey, for instance thinks there is a lot of work to do. Hear him “the message is clear, without Essien, Muntari, Kingston and the other seasoned players, the team could be in shambles and we would need a lot of these friendlies to get the team shape for the tough and crowd programme ahead”.

Joe Aggrey described the goalless match against Tunisia as a useless encounter and complete waste of time. His views are shared by another veteran sports journalist Ebo Quansah and former President of the Sports Writers Association of Ghana (SWAG). Ebo was particularly not too enthused with the performance of Serbian Coach Rajevac. He questioned the usefulness of the Serbian’s sign language to the players and wondered how many of the players had attended any sign language classes.

On the whole, the Tunisians appeared better prepared and showed more cohesion in attack which really exposed the weakness in the Ghana defence. The match has given the myriad of football experts the opportunity to discuss football administration in the country and a large section of the population who are bored with the large dose of political talk in the air.

Incidentally, Ghana has another match against Tunisia. This time, it is the Africa Women’s competition in Equatorial Guinea. Both teams are virtually out of the qualifying stages and the match could be termed another friendly, with very little at stake except perhaps pride of honour.

No matter the result, it is hoped it would generate enough discussion on the promotion of women’s football in Ghana and further help in reducing the political tension in the country.

There is also the expectation that the Under- 17 national team The Black Starlets, will shine in their Africa championships qualifying match against their Gambian counterparts in Banjul on Saturday Nov 22. The Starlets won the first leg match 3-1 in Kumasi and there is every hope that they would be able to hold the Gambians at home. That would be good news and topical enough to dilute the political tension in the country prior to the National election on Dec 7.