Is this the dullest  World Cup so far, asks Carl Jones.

The boys from Brazil were on their way.

The most famous colours in world football, worn by flamboyant mega-rich superstars, taking on one of the competition’s minnows, North Korea.

This had to be the moment when the 2010 World Cup finally caught fire and the goals started flying in. Didn’t it?

So far, the fact that we’ve spent most of our time talking about those blasted vuvuzela trumpets in the absence of wonder-goals is an indication of just how dull the action on the pitch has been so far. Teams appear to be more interested in avoiding defeat than they are in winning, and that doesn’t make for a great prime-time TV spectacle.

To be fair, this South African festival was always going to struggle to live up to the stratospheric hype which preceded it.

But considering the greatest footballers on the planet are pretty much all in attendance, seeking the highest honour of their careers, you have to say the action so far has been a huge anticlimax.

Even the hardest-core of football fans would struggle to mount a convincing case for the defence on the evidence served up in the first week

Last night’s Brazil game was no different. Commentators were trying desperately to make more out of the run-of-the mill football, simply because the blokes concerned were wearing famous blue and yellow Brazil shirts.

You’d think they were the competition’s answer to the Harlem Globetrotters, when in truth, they just looked like another workmanlike team.

Galling as it is for an Englishman to admit, the Germans have provided the only top rate entertainment of the competition so far, when they hammered the Aussies.

But even then, we’re not really sure whether it was the old European enemy looking awesomely good, or the equally old enemy from Down Under being simply awful.

One week in, you have to say this has been one of the dullest world cups ever.

But let’s pull some positives out of it – goalkeeping blunders aside, England’s performance against the USA was pretty much as good as anything we’ve seen in the competition to far. Flawed, but on the whole competent.

Maybe, just maybe, Fabio’s boys could be the ones who take the 2010 World Cup on to the next level.

It’s Chile v Honduras this afternoon . . . you can’t see either of them managing to do it!