Euro 2024 isn't even over yet, but already people are asking how the tournament will be remembered.
My answer is: it was a success. It may not have been a great tournament for football, any more than train services being interrupted or stopped, but it was good for what really matters: the millions of fans who came to Germany and the shared experience of watching football together and having a good time.
It was also a fun experience for us as the host nation, and in Germany we started off with comparisons to the 2006 World Cup, which was inevitable but unrealistic.
There was no second “summer fairytale” or “Sommermarchen” and Euro 2024 was neither perfect nor the best ever, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily a disappointment. In fact, it was downright disappointing.
Fans were visible from the start
Sunday's final will be the 51st match since the tournament began 31 days ago, when Germany and Scotland faced off on June 14.
Not every match was great, and to be honest some were quite boring, but that's what a major final is usually like, there was plenty to enjoy at every stage.
One of the themes of these Euros has been that smaller teams have surprised us with their performances, playing more attractive football than some of the bigger nations.
But for me it was the fans that stood out from the start: I'll never forget the tens of thousands of Scotland supporters who gathered in Munich and how they continued to party even after their team had suffered a heavy defeat, and how not much changed wherever I went.
I've travelled thousands of miles to cover matches in almost every city and I've never seen any signs of trouble. Thankfully, such incidents have been very rare anywhere. In terms of supporter safety and security, it's been peaceful and that's great.
Instead, I saw and heard things that made me smile, like the huge fan walk to the stadium before the Dutch game, or things that left me deaf for days afterwards, like the way Romanian fans turned up the volume and cheered while I sat with them during the draw with Slovakia.
I've looked at the country and the tournament from the perspective of a German, a pundit and a football fan and enjoyed all three aspects.
Meeting such lovely, like-minded people whilst watching football has been an incredible experience. And interviewing Gary Lineker has been an equally incredible experience. I spoke to him this week for German broadcaster ARD and it was a very special experience as he is a huge figure in world football and German football fans adore him so much.
In Germany people listen whenever he says something so it was a great privilege to sit down with him for 30 minutes and discuss football, Germany and the Euros.
As well as putting together these columns, I've had the opportunity to work for the BBC on a number of occasions myself, so this tournament couldn't have been any better from a personal or professional point of view.
Is this just the beginning for Germany?
One of the best games I have ever seen ended with the most painful result, Germany losing to Spain.
I still think the result could have been the other way around, but I don't think you can argue that Spain didn't deserve to be in the final. It's a shame we had to face them in the quarter-finals.
Losing in the quarter-finals felt like an early exit for Germany, but overall it could be said that Julian Nagelsmann's team performed reasonably well.
But the more important thing we can take from this tournament is that the bond between German fans and their team has been strengthened again, after a few years that haven't been the best.
We don't have a particularly young squad – Toni Kroos has retired and Thomas Muller is likely to stop playing for the national team – but we have a squad that supporters can relate to and will continue to be a good squad for the foreseeable future, even if we still have a lot of work to do to win something in the near future.
We have two years to make real progress before the 2026 World Cup, and this month should be remembered as a great start.
Nagelsmann has produced an exciting home tournament and now he will have to build on that, but there are some positives to be had, such as the form of Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz.
But we didn't make it to the final. Along with Spain, there's one team on Sunday that we probably didn't expect.
Spain are the best team I've seen here but it's really interesting to see how England have gone from a point where they were receiving a lot of criticism to the praise they are receiving now.
It will be a really interesting game. Spain are the favourites to win but personally I would like to see Gareth Southgate win because he has done so much for the national team and created the right environment for success.
People still ask me here why I support England and I don't think anyone can blame me.
Thomas Hitzlsperger was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan in Berlin.
