The damning verdict coming out of the World Cup in South Africa on world football is that standards have dropped a;armingly.

Ok, that might be taking things too far but this tournament is far from taking my breath away. There is a reluctance to attack, most teams preferring to ensure they don’t concede. You would expect, then, defences to be well drilled and perform to the highest standards. But no. With the unsurprising exception of the Germans, defences have been weak.

Especially in the goalkeeping department with the tournament ball, the Jabulani, taking most of the blame. Hang on, though. Has anyone seen it really move in the air? I haven’t. It’s looked like a perfectly normal football to me.

So why this reliance on defence when the majority of teams boast a wealth of attacking riches? You could argue that nerves and fear of losing your opening game is contributing to the lack of goalmouth action so far and that certainly plays its part. It does not, however, excuse the lack of quality.

There seems to be a real lack of urgency, a real lack of interest in making an early statement (or just interest if you look at Greece). All apart from Germany, the only team to come out with the intention of shoving their name right back in the faces of the watching press and public.

This is football’s showpiece and the chance for every country to show what they can do – and if they can do little, to show what they can stop the opposition doing. Neither has been the case so far and it’s desperately disappointing.

I don’t expect things to carry on as they are. With that opening game out of the way, I’m sure each team will be able to relax a little bit (or step up their game through fear of very real failure) and begin to express themselves as they can.

As it stands though, South Africa will not go down as a classic and could be the worst since Italia 90 as John Cross of the Daily Mirror said via Twitter (about five minutes after I started writing this article in fact!):

“The games have been generally disappointing so far in #worldcup. Worst since Italia 90?”

We have yet to see tournament favourites Spain, constant threat Brazil and Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal, of course, but on what we’ve seen so far I’m not getting my hopes up. I think only Spain will endeavour to match the attacking mindset of Germany. Portugal have Ronaldo, yes, but are still relatively defensive and even the great Brazil have had a rod of defensive steel rammed down their spine by coach Dunga.

At this rate, we could be looking at the second round or even the quarter finals before things really begin to hot up.