Disquiet amongst German supporters on their way to the game had hardened into despondency by the time they were trekking away from Lyon's Stade de Gerland after seeing their team clinically taken apart by Croatia.
Expectations that this threadbare German side would somehow generate their traditional qualities of pace, power and perception on the journey to a World Cup final were shown to be no more than a generous concession to a glorious past.
The reality was that a team, no better nor worse than in earlier games, lacked the midfield presence and, more surprisingly still, the defensive stability to justify their high rating.
Against that background it would be easy to overstate the merit of the Croatian performance. Yet, it ought not obscure the task awaiting France on Wednesday and, further down the road, Mick McCarthy's Republic of Ireland team, whom they meet at the start of their European Championship programme at Lansdowne Road in September.
Strong and forthright at the back, balanced in midfield and positively streetwise up front, they fully capitalised on the opposition's weaknesses. Having survived uneasily in the opening half hour, they were running all over the Germans at different stages of the second half.
That has to be set, however, against the game's turning point in the 39th minute at a stage when it was still scoreless and Germany, for all their limitations in invention, were some way ahead in terms in possession.
Then Christian Woerns, who had earlier clattered into opponents with some abandon, was blatantly late with the tackle on Davor Suker and the Croatian hadn't stopped rolling when the red card was produced by Norwegian referee Rune Pedersen.
Not many would agree with Lothar Matthaus's post-match statement that Woerns had been harshly treated, but the incident brought into focus yet again the contentious issue of the tackle.
Separating the malicious from the misjudged in the heat of battle has ever been the scourge of referees. The problem here is that match officials, acting on the instructions of FIFA, make no allowance for the second eventuality.
It is right that the tackle intended to injure should be punished by the ultimate sanction. But when a player, already committed to the tackle, is beaten by the sheer pace of an opponent, a red card offends against natural justice.
The rewritten legislation has had the effect of exacerbating the equally reprehensible trend of players diving, not merely to win a free but in some instances gain a numerical advantage.
Some of the theatrics here over the last three weeks have been quite outrageous, but except in rare instances, they have gone unpunished. Until such time as the crackdown on tacklers is matched by corresponding action against those who feign fouls, football is going to slide into further disrepute. And FIFA, in their ill-conceived drift towards making football a non-contact sport, will carry much of the responsibility.
On Saturday, Davor Suker, the man perceived as posing the biggest threat to the Germans, spent almost as much time on the grass as on his feet, but in his better moments he was one of the game's more influential performers.
Fittingly, it earned him the third and final goal but at that stage the losers were demoralised and broad lanes were opening up with increasing frequency to Andreas Kopke's goal.
Kopke's eccentric goalkeeping has been at the root of Germany's problems ever since their opening game against the United States, but Berti Vogts was skirting the point diplomatically when he held court later in the evening.
"It was a collective thing, not just down to one or two individuals," he said. "Christian Woern's red card hit us hard, but overall we didn't play as well as I expected. It's a bad evening for German football."
Predictably, Miroslav Blazevic, the Croation coach, was seeing things from a different perspective. "These are special men," he said of his players. "We went to sleep at some stages of the game, but when we needed to find more pace, we found it."
Sleep wasn't readily discernible in the contributions of players like Slaven Bilic, Mario Stanic and Zvonimir Soldo, but it wasn't until Woerns had made his long, solitary walk to the touchline that Zvonimir Boban delivered on his exalted rating in midfield.
Germany, unable to open the supply routes to their front men, Jurgen Klinsmann and Oliver Bierhoff, had already created a couple of half chances when Robert Jarni hit the target - and the opposition's confidence - in the second minute of injury-time in the first half.
Stanic rolled the square pass to Jarni 25 yards out and his low shot, hit with tremendous power, was past Kokpe almost before he noticed. The second, in the 79th minute, was very similar, with Kopke again beaten comprehensively by a long-range shot, this time from the right flank by Goran Vlaovic.
By now, Germany were totally broken and Suker's goal, after he had wriggled his way from the byline, completed their most emphatic World Cup defeat since 1954.
