We present here a study of XMM-Newton data of two distant galaxy cluster candidates. One of these was discovered serendipitously in near infrared data, CL J0533-2411, the other one corresponds to the cluster EIS J0533-2412 part of the EIS cluster survey. The estimated redshift of CL J0533-2411 is z=1.2-1.7. EIS J0533-2412 is a rich system (Lcl =299), with a spectroscopically confirmed redshift of z=1.3. Both galaxy concentrations show firm X-ray detections, located within 30'' of their optical center. However, we cannot resolve the sources with XMM-Newton. If the X-ray emission originates from the X-ray emitting intra-cluster medium (ICM) it would be extremely concentrated which is rather unlikely (core radii below 14 h65-1 kpc and 40 h65-1 kpc, respectively). We argue that the X-ray sources are more likely AGN members of the galaxy concentrations. We set an upper limit for the bolometric luminosity of a hot ICM in the range ~ 0.7-2.1 x 1044 h65-2 erg/s for CL J0533-2411, depending on the exact redshift. For EIS J0533-2412 the limit is Lbol= (6.2+/-1.4) x 1043 h65-2 erg/s. We interpret our result in the following way: EIS J0533-2412 (and possibly CL J0533-2411) are proto-clusters and show matter overdensities before collapse, which explains the low significance of extended X-ray emission.