Cameroon promised a lot but delivered very little when it came to the crunch.
Everyone has been looking to the Indomitable Lions to become Africa's first World Cup semi-finalists and everything looked set for them to achieve the feat this time.
They arrived as African Nations Cup champions with players who play week-in week-out for some of Europe's biggest clubs.
Winfried Chafer's men looked strong at the start, but then lost their way against Saudi Arabia as they only managed a 1-0 victory when many were expecting an avalanche of goals.
The Saudi match was where you started to see Cameroon’s confidence ebbing away, but even at the end they had a chance to save themselves when Germany went down to 10 men in Shizuoka.
Cameroon’s inability to beat Germany was no shame in itself – plenty of teams have tried to do that before and failed – but this was a World Cup were they were expecting much greater things.