With a couple of minutes to play in Budapest, the French midfielder Adrien Rabiot looked squarely at Sergio Oliveira, his Portuguese opponent, and advised him to back away.
The game had oscillated — Portugal led, then France, then Portugal struck back — and so had their fates, dependent to some extent on the outcome of the group’s other game, between Germany and Hungary in Munich.
Only once Leon Goretzka had secured Germany a point against Hungary was it all settled.
Just as significant, particularly in its final game, France managed to give the impression that it has more to offer as and when necessary.
Germany, Portugal, Belgium, England and Spain — the group of teams that would expect to profit from any slight hesitation on the part of France — have yet to hit their stride.
Roberto Mancini has his wish.
It is — despite relatively stiff competition from the Netherlands — the most compelling team in the tournament, the one that it is most rewarding to watch.
That early promise is no guarantee of later success, of course.
Mancini’s team should have enough to breeze past Austria in the first knockout round, but Belgium, its most probable opponent in the quarterfinal, would provide a sterner test.
Roberto Martínez’s team also has won all its games, but it has done so with none of the verve or panache that has marked Italy’s progress.
Nobody is under any illusions that the current format for the European Championship is perfect.
Only one of the final round of games — the Netherlands’ win against North Macedonia — was devoid of it; the Dutch had already won their group, and their guest in Amsterdam had already been eliminated.
That has been mitigated a little this time by the fact that Spain could not top its group, thanks to Sweden’s late winner against Poland, and will face Croatia in Copenhagen.
On one side of the draw, for example, Belgium must first face Portugal, then endure a potential quarterfinal with France, before meeting Spain — perhaps — in a semifinal.
It means there is a route to the latter stages for nations that would, in other formats, expect to be dispatched far earlier.
But it also rather exposes the logic that it does not matter when you face the major powers: To win the tournament, after all, you have to play them at some point.
Just as was the case in Brazil in 2014, France in 2016 and Russia in 2018, Switzerland has made the last 16 of a major tournament.
It is easy to deride the Swiss, as well as that other great recidivist qualifier for the knockout rounds, Sweden, as little more than cannon fodder for the traditional powerhouses in the round of 16.
And nor should it disguise the fact that the inability of two of Europe’s most populous nations — Turkey and Russia — to do the same is a quite extraordinary failure.
Russia was a semifinalist in 2008, too, and it enjoyed a stirring run to the quarterfinals in its home World Cup three years ago.
The causes of those respective failures are not uniform — Russia does not export players, Turkey does not develop nearly enough of them — but there is one binding thread: Both Russia and Turkey are isolationist soccer cultures, resistant to the cutting-edge thinking and best practices that emanate from the leagues to their west.