June 4, 2004

Singapore football's enfant terrible Ahmad Latiff is in the disciplinary doldrums again after being dropped from the Singapore squad to face Oman next week.

The midfielder was nowhere in sight for the Lions training session on Wednesday morning. After sending a mobile phone message to a team official saying that he had overslept & apologising, Latiff could not be contacted. That proved to be the last straw for national coach Radojko Avramovic.

A frustrated Avramovic has tolerated several disciplinary lapses from the talented 24-year-old during his reign but has decided to wield the axe on Latiff ahead of the World Cup qualifier on June 9.

Avramovic say it was not the first time that Latiff has missed training & it would not be fair to the other players if the player was coming along after all that. He also say he had discussions with Latiff many times on this matter telling the player that is not the way to do thing but clearly Latiff has turned a deaf ear Avramovic & is showing respect to the rest of the team

It is believed out of 6 training sessions, Latiff has only turned out for 3. Comparing that to Tan Kim Leng, who knew he would not be going to Oman because of injury but continued to come for training the picture look very bad for Latiff.

1 of Singapore finest players when he is on song, Latiff has also proven to be an intractable headache for the national team management. He has been dropped from the national team several times for ill discipline.

The door has not completely slammed shut on Latiff's national team career though. When asked about Latiff Lions future, Avramovic said it depends entirely on what Latiff do to salvage the situation.