Pre-tournament favourites crashed OUT! Quotes......

The time is over and the pain is twice as bad," said a tearful Batistuta. "I dreamed of a different ending.

"I feel a great sadness and disappointment," said Bielsa.

"Football is a sport in which the winners are not always those who deserve it and 80 percent of the time we played in the three matches was played in our opponents' half," Bielsa said

Batistuta said: "In our group we only played an attacking game. England and Sweden almost played with 10 defenders for most of the time. In our three games we almost played in our opponents' half "

Young midfielder Pablo Aimar summed up the mood in the twice-winner's camp that they had been hard done by.

He said: "It's difficult (to score) when a team defends with 10 men. We did everything we could but we couldn't (win), it's not that we didn't want to. We didn't score the goals to match our chances.

"Teams are getting results from defending with lots of players. Let's hope they don't continue to benefit from that because otherwise people will stop coming (to watch)."

Batistuta said: "That Argentina are leaving this World Cup is unjust... I know what this team is worth and I know what we gave in these three matches.

The Manchester United midfielder Juan Veron said: "I am destroyed. We didn't deserve this. I usually cry a lot and the night after the match I cried even more.

"Bitter? Of course, but calm. If we had lost by four goals, we could be regret our displays.

"But that's not the case. I think we did everything well."

``What can I say?'' asked striker Gabriel Batistuta. ``We have tried to play good football, and other teams have just thrown everyone back.''

``To be honest, those tactics helped us,'' Swedish goalkeeper Magnus Hedman said. ``We looked at the fact they only had one striker and said, 'This could be good for us.'''

Hedman said he was ``very surprised'' Bielsa took off Batistuta so early in the second half of Wednesday's game instead of pairing him with the incoming Crespo.

He answered Argentina's criticism that rivals had been too defensive by saying it simply wasn't possible to attack Argentina and expect to survive.

``They were so skillful today that it was frightening,'' Hedman said. ``They are so unbelievable that you have no choice but to defend.

``In the second half we tried not to play so deep, but it proved so difficult.

``They were the greatest team I've ever played against.''

Lady luck let us down, Veron says

BUENOS AIRES, June 19 (AFP): Argentina midfielder Juan Sebastian Veron believes his team was unlucky to crash out of the World Cup in the opening phase.
"We just lacked a little bit of luck, the luck we did enjoy in the qualifiers," Veron told Radio Rivadavia late Wednesday.
"Everyone saw we weren't the side we were in the qualifiers," added the Manchester United midfielder.
"We really pushed ourselves, nobody worked harder than we did - but sometimes that's how football works out and you have to take things as they come," he added.
"Our conscience is clear," insisted Veron, who has taken the chance to spend a few days with his family before returning to England for pre-season training with Manchester United.

Devastated Argentina say exit unjust

NARAHA, Japan (Reuters) -- Argentina's shell-shocked players left for home Thursday after their World Cup elimination complaining that defensive-minded opponents had scuppered their campaign.

Sweden finished the pre-tournament favorite's hopes with a 1-1 draw on Wednesday which followed the Argentine's 1-0 defeat by England. Both results were ground out with safety-first approaches by the European teams.

Veteran striker Gabriel Batistuta, who has played his last game for Argentina, said: "The goal looked smaller and smaller and it wouldn't open for us.

"The only team that's going to end the four-year cycle well are those that come out world champion. All the others will feel bad."

Argentina's forward Hernan Crespo, right, and teammate Juan Pablo Sorin sits on a local train at the Hirono station, north of Tokyo, after departing from their team's training camp in Naraha, Thursday, June 13, 2002. Argentina was eliminated Wednesday after a 1-1 with Sweden and failed to advance to the second round for the first time in 40 years. (AP Photo/Horacio Villalobos, Diario Popular)

CAN'T UNDERSTAND

"We're devastated," Juan Sebastian Veron added after boarding a train at nearby Hirono with a small group of teammates bound for Tokyo where they were going to meet up with their families.

"We can't understand what happened. It still hasn't sunk in," Veron, who was accompanied by Hernan Crespo, Claudio Lopez and Juan Pablo Sorin, told Argentine reporters on the train.

"We talked late into the night, all of us together," he said after Argentina was held to a 1-1 draw by Sweden in Miyagi.

The J-Village camp where Argentina made its World Cup headquarters was as usual guarded by a large contingent of Japanese police as players and training staff inside waited for their turn to leave.

Bielsa, his staff and a group of players were going to be the last to leave, catching a plane to Argentina from Tokyo's Haneda airport via Frankfurt in the early hours of Friday morning.

Most of the players were going to Europe, where they are based, though some were planning to fly on to Argentina for a holiday afterwards. Argentina was made pre-tournament favorite after a brilliant qualifying campaign and an unbeaten run of 18 matches before the finals dating back to July 2000.

MIYAGI, Japan (AP) -- Argentina arrived at the World Cup with a fearsome reputation as an offensive power. Gabriel Batistuta, Hernan Crespo, Ariel Ortega and Juan Sebastian Veron would terrify opponents with their speed and nose for the goal.

Remarkably, the star-studded squad couldn't find the net often enough and Argentina was eliminated in the first round with just two goals. After starting with a 1-0 win over Nigeria, it lost 1-0 to England and tied 1-1 with Sweden.

Not even defending champion France's first-round departure rocked the tournament the way Argentina's flop did.

The team left cursing what it perceived as the defensive-minded tactics of its European opponents.

Added midfielder Veron: ``Soccer isn't an exact science. These things happen against the odds. You just have to accept it.''

Argentina's team Juan Veron, right, and teammate Claudio Lopez sit on a local train at the Hirono station, north of Tokyo, after departing from their team's training camp in Naraha, Thursday, June 13, 2002. Argentina was eliminated Wednesday after a 1-1 with Sweden and failed to advance to the second round for the first time in 40 years. (AP Photo/Horacio Villalobos, Diario Popular)

In many ways, Argentina was a victim of its own success.

Before the World Cup, the team was undefeated for two years, sailing through South America's qualifiers and proving invincible on its travels in Europe.

The players and coaching staff were irate after losing to archrival England. Coach Marcelo Bielsa accused the English of killing the game after scoring a 44th-minute penalty kick.

He instructed his players to launch constant attacks, pinning Swedish defenders in their own half of the field. The Argentines did just that, but a never-ending barrage of attacks failed to produce more than one goal -- and that was a rebound after a missed penalty kick in the 88th minute.

``I am terribly sad, and incredibly disillusioned,'' Bielsa said.

A consolation for Argentina was the fine play of 21-year-old Pablo Aimar, who is likely to be at the center of the team's rebuilding effort.

The draw with Sweden was Batistuta's last game for Argentina after a spectacular career that saw score 56 goals in 78 games.

The disappointing finish could also spell the end for Simeone, Argentina's most-experienced international player with 106 appearances.

But it's not just the tactics of Argentina's opponents that will come under the spotlight during the review of its worst World Cup showing in 40 years. There may be some questions about Bielsa's coaching.

Bielsa steadfastly refused to adjust an unorthodox 3-3-1-3 formation, even when things went sour. The system worked to perfection in the qualifiers, but it looked as though Argentina's World Cup opponents had done their homework.

The system, with just one central striker supported by two wingers, meant Batistuta at times was isolated up front. The scheme also left little or no room for Crespo, who would expect a starting place on almost any other team in the world.

>>For even more thoughts go to Argentina-England and Sweden-Argentina<<