He guard wearing a Haitian Football Federation T-shirt paces nervously in front of the heavy, blue steel door, his pump-action shotgun held tightly in his right hand.

He presses his finger against the trigger when anyone bangs loudly on the metal to enter the Stad Sylvio Cator in downtown Port au Prince, pulling the door slowly open and gingerly peering his head out to see who it is.

Usually they are met with a firm volley of abuse in Creole, but this time it is the guests he has been expecting.

The Haitian national football team bus has arrived for training the day before one of the most important matches in the team's history: a 2014 World Cup qualifier against the minnows of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

It is also the country's first home football match since as many as 300,000 people were killed when a massive 7.0 earthquake reduced much of the city to rubble.

"It's 46 degrees on the pitch, we just measured it," lamented the team's Brazilian coach Edson Tavares. It is three in the afternoon, the same time the match is due to be played 24-hours later.

"It's crazy. FIFA [football's world governing body] agreed to move the match to this time. CONCACAF [the governing body for the Caribbean] said no. What do they know? They work out of New York and know nothing about the heat in the Caribbean."

But the change in time was a necessity as much for the Haitians as anyone else. Electricity is scarce in the city, too scarce for the expensive but impotent flood lights that had been installed.