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.

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)."

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.

"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 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."

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.

Coach Marcelo Bielsa, who did not give a post-mortem news conference, went for a run near midday on the lush playing fields of the training centre normally used by Japan's national team.

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.

It departs the 2002 tournament with its worst record since the 1962 finals in Chile, the last time it failed to reach the second stage, apart from failing to get past the qualifiers in 1970.