LAHORE, April 8: A 20-member Pakistan Under-23 football team has been announced to face a strong Syrian side in two matches of the Athens Olympics-2004 preliminary round to be held in Damascus (Syria).

The first match will be played on April 16 and the second on 19. The team will depart for Damascus on April 14.

The matches were scheduled to be held on April 5 and 7 but deferred for April 16 and 19 on the request of Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) as the earlier dates were clashing with the March 29 April 6 SAF Games dates which were later also postponed due to Iraq war.

The team is the same which was announced for the SAF Games.

No PFF official was available to inform the media what the arrangements were made to ascertain the correct age of the boys to avoid any untoward incident in Syria.

Last year, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) had suspended five Pakistani players on the charge of being overaged for an Asia  Under-17 Championship held in Dubai.

AFC also suspended the manager of that team Malik Aziz for two years besides imposing a cash fine of US $10,000 on the PFF.

It was learnt that the wrist test of the boys was scheduled to be conducted on April 6 but could not be organised.

Muhammad Lateef as coach and Niaz Ahmad as assistant coach are the only two officials who have been named to accompany the team.

Team:

Goalkeepers: Jaffar Khan, Asadullah Tariq.

Defenders: Ashfaq Ahmed, Akbar Ali, Asadullah, Muhammad Zahid, Arif Masih, Gulzar Ahmed, Amir Shahzad, Attique-ur-Rehman.

Mid-fielders: Zulifqar Ali Shah, Tahir Karamat, Nomi Martin Gill, Zakir Hussain.

Strikers: Adeel Ahmed, Muhammad Essa, Muhammad Musa, Nasrullah Khan, Zahid Hameed, Shahid Ahmed.