Avramovic unhappy with display of national under-23 players

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It was not the performance Radojko Avramovich was looking for, ahead of the Singapore under-23 team's opening Olympic qualifier for the 2012 London Games.

Four days out from their double-header with Yemen, the Courts Young Lions - 15 of the players in the team have been selected in the latest national under-23 team - lost 1-0 to Hougang United in the Great Eastern-Yeo's S-League on Monday night.

The match at Hougang Stadium saw 14 of the 15 players taste action, and none of them did enough to impressed Singapore's national coach, who was watching in the stands.

The 61-year-old Serb was unhappy with the lacklustre display.

"A lot of players looked like they didn't want to play this game," said Avramovic, when asked if the boys were afraid about picking up injuries before such a big international outing.

"They cannot pick and choose, they must give 100 per cent through the 90 minutes of every game."

The 20-man squad will leave for the United Arab Emirates and will play both their games at the Khalifa Stadium in Al Ain.

The opening game will be on Saturday and the second match will kick-off 48 hours later.

Originally slated to be played on a home and away basis, FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation jointly-decided to shift the two matches to a neutral venue due to the ongoing political situation in Yemen.

The home side shipped in 14 goals in their three prior outings, but managed to keep a clean sheet this time and came away with the three points, after Jordan Webb's header off a free-kick in the fourth minute turned out to be the winner.

All through the match, instructions were relayed to the Courts Young Lions bench via mobile phone from Football Association of Singapore technical director Slobodan Pavkovic (Pavkovic is currently serving a season-long touchline ban).

But nothing seemed to work for the visitors.

At least Avramovic believes his players will be ready for battle, despite the short recovery time to Saturday's game, and the even shorter turnaround to Monday's match.

"I'll see how they recover from the game against Hougang, and we will continue to tactically to prepare for them for Yemen," he said.

"We have three days to get ready. They were not following instructions, and if they continue this way, we will make changes." - TODAY