For England, the honour of being the second team to confirm their place at Euro 2016. For the team who beat them to it, the first hints that this might be a tournament they not only own, but from which they pick up a medal. In nine months' time this Thursday, the first bars of La Marseillaise will punch through the Stade de France and if the 11 men lining up in blue do not shudder with a sense of destiny then they will have been wearing blinkers.
The best seat in the house on June 10 will likely be occupied by the new, French president of Fifa, Michel Platini, by coincidence the captain of France when the nation last hosted a European championship, in 1984. They won it. On the edge of the dugout will stand the other Frenchman to have captained his country at a major tournament played at home. Didier Deschamps, now the coach of Les?Bleus, lifted the World Cup, at the Stade de France in 1998.
That is a pair of impeccable precedents. In the past 50 years, France has never staged a major international competition without leaving it as champions. So, what could possibly go wrong this time?
Quite a lot, if you consider France's dexterity, in recent competitions, at shooting themselves in the foot, or if you look closely at the form guide. Ranked a mere 24th in the world, Les?Bleus play Serbia in Bordeaux tonight on a run of three defeats in their past five friendlies, although the 1-0 win against Portugal in Lisbon on Friday certainly cleared away some of the jadedness that affected Deschamps's team in June.
More important, this summer has restored the reputation of France as a reliable nursery of very fine footballers. Deschamps can claim little credit for that. It is the market that says so. The last transfer window could hardly been more flattering of French talent had Platini, the Uefa president, ordered Europe's leading clubs explicitly to start prioritising and promoting French players.
The best of them did not need to move to feel flattered. Karim Benzema, the Real Madrid striker, and Paul Pogba, the Juventus midfielder, read and heard on a daily basis how coveted they are by heavyweight clubs, regarded as just about peerless in their specialist positions. The pair stayed in Spain and Italy because they are prized by employers who know their values will only rise further, next summer, if they drive Les?Bleus through to the late phases of Euro 2016, like Platini did in 1984, or Zinedine Zidane in 1998.
Juventus have just allocated Pogba their No?10 jersey, a garment so associated with the sport's royalty that he may have been surprised to find it not lined with mink. Previous owners include Platini.
Juventus, like Deschamps, want this to be the season where Pogba, 22, adds leadership to his broad skills-set. It is a quality France reach out for, in a youngish squad. Ten days ago, Deschamps sat down in the offices of L'Equipe and told reporters he saw one clear way of cultivating it: "The more players are immersed in the pressures of being at big clubs, the better." Et voila.
He promptly took a call from Anthony Martial, the 19-year-old to whom he gave a first senior cap on Friday, saying words to the effect of: "Boss, I've had an astonishing offer to go and immerse myself in the pressures of a big club."
Deschamps approved Martial's leave to complete his transfer from Monaco to Manchester United, before presumably putting down the phone and asking his assistants: "He said euros 18?million, not euros 80?million, didn't he?"
Martial, the world's costliest teenager even before the long-term add-ons of his fee are calculated, is not alone for moving upwards. Morgan Schneiderlin, who has been capped 10 times by Deschamps, spoke about the effect of switching from Southampton to United. "Other people's view of me has altered," he acknowledged.
Other younger players on Deschamps's radar have, like Martial, exchanged the modest audiences at Monaco for more taxing working environments, the anchor midfielder Geoffrey Kondogbia joining Internazionale and the left-back Layvin Kurzawa Paris St-Germain. He sees starlets gaining responsibilities. At Real Madrid, Raphael Varane steps closer to being regarded as a first-choice centre-half; at Chelsea, Kurt Zouma has learnt in four weeks about his enhanced status there.
Deschamps anticipates more frequent scouting trips to England than he did three months back. He could now pick a competitive France XI on the basis of who he could see in London armed only with a Travelcard. Try these as potential group-winners at a
24-team European championship: Lloris, Debuchy, Zouma, Koscielny, Capoue, Flamini, Coquelin, Cabaye, Payet, Giroud, Remy. Or this outfield line-up drawn from Premier League clubs outside the capital: Sagna, Mangala, Sakho, Clichy, Sissoko, Schneiderlin, M'Vila, Nasri, Gomis, Martial.
But these would be fantasy choices. Samir Nasri, for one, is extremely unlikely to be spending next June on international duty, so tetchy is his relationship with Deschamps. Sunderland's Yann M'Vila, who had 20 caps by the time he was 22, has gained none in the four years since he was suspended by the French Federation for his part in a nightclub expedition while on under-21 duty.
M'Vila is far from the only villain in the chequered last five years of Les?Bleus. A great deal of love from the public has been lost since the night Deschamps raised the World Cup aloft and ushered crowds of Parisiens on to the Champs-Elysees chanting "Zidane for President"'.
There was Knysna, where the entire 2010 squad, struggling to clamber out of their group at the South Africa World Cup, went on strike. There were shrill spats between Laurent Blanc, Deschamps's predecessor, and players at Euro 2012.
Perhaps the best thing about the Brazil World Cup for Deschamps was that it passed off relatively quietly off the pitch. France, beaten by Germany, made the last eight. This time, they are obliged to go further, and to behave.