Now, perhaps uniquely, the best two sides will face one another at the quarter-final stage.

Euro 2024 has broadly been a positive tournament, although its level of entertainment value in the knockout stage is at risk of being compromised by the ‘lopsided’ draw, a concept that affected Euro 2016, World Cup 2018 and Euro 2020, too.

But there are merits to a draw that has more top teams in one half. You get exciting clashes between genuine contenders at a relatively early stage and a better chance of an outsider progressing further than they ever have — and this tournament has been about the smaller nations as much as the contenders. A lopsided draw can work particularly well in the Champions League when every round aside from the final is two-legged.

Think about it: by the semi-final stage, if you have two high-quality teams and two medium-quality teams, on paper a lopsided draw would mean you would have four closely contested matches rather than four predictable matches. OK, the final might be a little unbalanced, but isn’t a final always an event in itself and rarely won comprehensively?