Switzerland defender Ludovic Magnin admits his side's last-16 exit in the World Cup despite not conceding a single goal was "heartbreaking" - but believes the future of Swiss football is rosy.

The Swiss were eliminated in a penalty shoot-out against Ukraine in Cologne on Monday night after a collective failure of nerve with Marco Streller, Tranquillo Barnetta and Ricardo Cabanas all missing from the spot.

It meant that the Swiss were eliminated after playing 390 minutes in Germany without conceding but Magnin believes their performance augurs well for Euro 2008 - a tournament the Swiss will co-host with Austria.

"Now we have two years when we will be playing friendlies and hopefully (in Euro 2008) we can go further than we did here," Magnin said.

"It (the Ukraine match) was a big learning experience for us against strong opponents."

The 27-year-old Stuttgart player said: "Now we must take stock and look at areas we need to improve on.

"We have a very young team which has great potential and we have time to improve and even the older players are not that old and will still be here in two years' time."

Magnin admitted that the manner of Switzerland's elimination was cruel, saying: "It was heartbreaking for the players and also for the people of Switzerland."

Barnetta was too upset to speak about his spot-kick miss - the 21-year-old playmaker had been one of the outstanding players of the Swiss campaign but Stephane Grichting, who played after coming on as a 33rd-minute substitute for Johan Djourou, believes that fatigue played a factor in the shoot-out which Ukraine won 3-0 despite Andriy Shevchenko missing the first kick in the sequence.

"It's true that we are a very young team," Grichting told PA Sport. "But the team had played 120 minutes flat out and there were some very tired legs.

"Andriy Shevchenko is one of the best strikers in the world but he missed his penalty as well so I don't think youth is the reason.

"Sadly we have to concede this result."

Switzerland coach Kobi Kuhn was unique among the 32 coaches in Germany to admit that his main priority was to prepare the team for Euro 2008.

"It was too sad for us," said Kuhn who as a player was sent home from the 1966 World Cup for breaking a curfew.

"We had a good qualifying campaign (for the last 16) against teams like France and South Korea.

"It's football and we have to accept it even if it was on penalties."