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Although the talk surrounding the Indonesian under-23 national team camp is focused on medals, coach Alberto Bica is keen to play down those expectations.

Bica, who took over the U-23s from fellow Uruguayan Cesar Payovich on Aug. 23, said his team’s preparations paled in comparison to its Southeast Asian Games rivals.

“We only have about 10 weeks for preparation. If I force players, it won’t work as most of them are fasting,” he said. “What can I say? It’s the National Team Body’s [BTN] call, and we were given a medal target in the SEA Games.”

The BTN handed Indonesia, which has not won SEA Games gold in football since the 1991 Games in Manila, a target of reaching the final in Vientiane, Laos. It bowed out in the group stage during the 2007 Games in Thailand, and its last medal was a bronze in 1999.

Bica faces a compressed schedule when the U-23 training camp in Palembang resumes on Sept. 25. The squad broke camp for Ramadan, and the coaching staff must quickly cull its roster from 30 to 18.

Bica, who stepped in when Payovich returned to Uruguay to tend to his ill wife, said his players had good individual skills. However, “they lack teamwork, and that’s our critical point. We’ll take it one step at a time and try to improve our teamwork before thinking about our opponents.”

Indonesia’s U-23s have not played a match since a flurry of friendlies in May and June. They lost 5-0 to the Iranian senior team in Tehran on May 26 and 2-1 to Iran’s U-23s two days later. They then lost 1-0 to the Malaysian U-23s on June 13 and 2-0 to Singapore’s U-23s on June 21.

Despite his worries, Bica said the team has enough time to prepare, especially as players will not be allowed to play for their clubs until after the Games.

BTN chief Rahim Soekasah said that step was necessary to achieve the medal target. Senior national team players, unlike their U-23 counterparts, avoided a similar fate before their 2011 Asian Cup qualifying matches.