The 15th European Football Championships begin on Friday, the largest-ever and the most anxious.
No previous edition of the continental cup, and perhaps no other major sporting event, has had to contend with the security challenges that provide the inescapable backdrop to what was supposed to be a month of football en fete.
Security is a staple narrative of sport in the modern era of mega-events, from the World Cup to the Olympics, but it has never been more relevant or real than at Euro 2016.
The hosts will kick-off against Romania tomorrow night in the same national stadium attacked by three suicide bombers last November, and with the nation under an extended state of emergency.
The Stade de France attack was the beginning of the 13 November atrocity and though the least deadly - a Portuguese bus driver was the only person among 130 killed that day to die at the stadium - it has shaped preparations.
Jacques Lambert, president of the organising committee, admitted as much this week.
"We want to lift ourselves out of the negative spiral around security that was imposed on us," he said.
The crowds of young, care-free supporters who gather at stadiums and fanzones are what give tournaments their colour.
They are also a security nightmare, a soft-target for terrorists who have demonstrated their capacity more than once in Europe in the last 18 months.
So preparations are in place.
The police and army personnel deployed this month would not fit inside the Stade de France.
There are 90,000 on duty but they are exhausted, with millions of hours of unclaimed overtime after more than a year on high terror alert and after a spring of civil discontent in France.
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