SENEGAL should not rush into dismantling its soccer team, despite the disappointing first-round exit from the African Nations Cup, senior players have said.

"There is no point in going in that direction, that will just add to errors," the 33-year-old Olympique Marseille defender Souleymane Diawara told reporters in Bata, where Senegal complete its tournament against Libya today.

"It has really hurt to be eliminated in the first round when we were convinced this team would do so much better," added fullback Omar Daf, the only player who remains from the 2002 team that reached the Nations Cup final in Mali and went on to become World Cup quarter-finalists in Japan.

"It is not long ago after the disappointment of the Nations Cup in 2006 that officials thought they could change things by dismantling the team. But we subsequently saw this was not the best solution. In my experience we all need to keep calm and first see what went wrong before drawing drastic conclusions.

"The current squad is young, talented and very willing," added the 34-year-old Daf of a team that shone in the qualifiers, eliminating Cameroun, only to crash out in the finals.

Senegal was eliminated after losing its opening game to Zambia and being beaten by co-host, Equatorial Guinea, a side ranked more than 100 places below them.