The permutations have been published. This is what the tournament has become for Scotland: a maths problem in which the variables are other nations, and the answer is required urgently by people holding their phones in the dark.
Scotland sit in Group C having taken three points from six. One win, against Haiti. One defeat, to Morocco, settled in the second minute by a goal that measured the distance between the two squads before most of the crowd had located their seats. The third fixture — Brazil, 24 June, Miami — remains. But the fixture is no longer the point. The point is the spreadsheet.
At least three results in other fixtures must resolve in Scotland's favour before Scotland's own group position becomes meaningful. Uzbekistan defeating DR Congo has been identified as a necessary condition. Uzbekistan are aware of this only in the sense that the information is publicly available. They have not been consulted. They have their own requirements.
This is the structural position: Scotland's survival in the tournament has been delegated to nations who owe Scotland nothing, who are pursuing their own objectives, who will not weigh the implications for a squad that has not reached the knockout stage of a World Cup in eight previous attempts. The permutations treat these nations as instruments. The nations are not instruments.
The support understands this now, in the way that people understand something when it is printed in a table with columns. The recalculation is happening in real time — which combination of scores, which sequence, which margin. The exercise is genuine. It is also a performance of agency by people who have none. Scotland cannot instruct Uzbekistan. Scotland cannot negotiate with Argentina. The spreadsheet gives the calculation a shape. The shape does not grant control.
What the spreadsheet reveals, for those attending carefully, is not a new situation. It is the old situation made legible. Scotland have always depended, at tournaments, on the disposition of strangers. The novelty is not the dependency — it is the precision with which the dependency can now be quantified and distributed on a phone. The support has not discovered something. The support has finally seen it.
Scotland have never progressed beyond the group stage in eight previous World Cup appearances. On several of those occasions, external results were required and did not arrive. The record does not suggest that the world has historically organised itself around Scotland's needs. There is no reason encoded in the data to expect a departure from this pattern.
The Brazil fixture is real. Three points remain available. Scotland must win, and then wait, and then read what strangers have decided.
The permutations exist. This is the most that can be confirmed.