For the first three weeks of this thing, pundits, long-time fans, small children, terrorists … everyone was jostling to be the first to declare this “the greatest World Cup”. Seems like a couple of prominent columnists have already written that twice.

Unbeaten Costa Rica! Unbeaten Colombia! Unbeaten Mexico tying Brazil! The U.S. and the final 15 minutes with Belgium! Two African teams in the final 16 for the first time! Spain dethroned! Italy humbled! England sent home!

Messi! James Rodriguez! Neymar! Cristiano Ronaldo, for a few days …

The rise of the Americas, who began the tournament with 10 teams and put eight of them in the final 16 teams, with haughty Europe managing only six. New faces! (Well, kinda; overall, 25 World Cup teams were at South Africa 2010, too.)

And then came the Fourth of July — or, as we call it on this side of the Atlantic, July 4. The day after July 3. And the sunny, open, oh-so-different World Cup… seemed to shift dramatically towards the dull and cynical World Cups we have come to know and be ambivalent about.

First, was Germany 1, France 0. The good thing about this game was that one stodgy European was going home.

The bad thing about it was … they played the game exactly like stodgy European teams would play. Careful, defensive, colorless. The Germans scored early, and the French hardly had a good chance, and it was the slowest 90 minutes of the tournament. (Or at least since Iran and Nigeria played that dreadful 0-0 group match.)

For me, it brought back memories of, oh, Italy 1990 (the worst World Cup, in my opinion, and also the lowest-scoring). Remember all those goals from the group stage, this time? Germany-France said, “We’re going back to gray and joyless now, thank you.”

Then came the late game, which Brazil won, 2-1, over Colombia, in a game we expected to be attractive but turned into something crude, led by Brazil’s Fernandinho hacking down James Rodriguez whenever he had the chance. Our correspondent, Richard Jolly, described Fernandinho as “the butcher of Fortaleza” and described the game as having “an air of anarchy” about it.

It was nowhere near as open and artistic as we hoped/expected it would be. And one that ended with a tournament-ending injury to Neymar, who is a very fine player, Brazil’s best, and who doesn’t seem particularly obnoxious, yet. In terms of soccer stars.

It was 2-1 late, and a ball coming out of the box was headed for Neymar, who probably weighs about 130 pounds, and a Colombia defender named Juan Camilo Zuniga rushed up from behind and planted his knee in the small of Neymar’s back.

The Brazilian kid went down immediately, but we thought maybe it was just the customary overreaction to contact, albeit contact a bit rougher than we normally see here.

And then he just laid there, squirming, and the medical guys got out there, and they hurried him out of the stadium, and soon after we found he has a broken vertebra in his lower back, and won’t play again in Brazil 2014.

And so the game sputtered to a conclusion. What we thought would be electric was just ugly.

“Jogo Bonito”? In The National, we called it “Jogo Feio” — the ugly game.

We can hope for better stuff from Argentina and Belgium and Costa Rica and Netherlands in the other two quarter0finals … but I no longer expect it.

I think the “beautiful football” part of this tournament is over. The final stages are going to be what we have come to expect. Rough, low-scoring, depressing.

Ugh.