The mechanism is live. Before Scotland kick off against Brazil at Hard Rock Stadium on 24 June, supporters have been invited to submit individual player ratings — a numerical commitment, made in advance, that will require reconciliation with whatever the ninety minutes produces.
This is not new behaviour formalised for the first time. Scotland supporters have rated players in aggregate for decades: in pubs, in print, in comment sections, in the particular silence that follows a substitution. What the current infrastructure adds is structure. The number is entered before kick-off. A return is requested thirty minutes after full-time. The gap between those two moments — what the submitted number was, and what the feeling became — is not recorded by the system.
That gap is where the interest sits.
Scotland arrive at this fixture having beaten Haiti 1-0 and lost to Morocco 1-0, the latter conceded inside two minutes of actual play, Ismael Saibari converting from a Brahim Díaz pass following a defensive lapse by Grant Hanley. Morocco held approximately 78% possession in the first half. The position in Group C — one win, one loss, one game remaining against Brazil — requires calculation rather than optimism or despair, and calculation is not what a pre-match rating mechanism primarily produces.
What it produces is a ledger. Each supporter who submits a rating before kick-off is entering a number that represents not performance observed but performance anticipated — a projection of what they believe a player will do, or perhaps what they need a player to do, against the nation that has won five World Cups. Scotland have never progressed beyond the group stage in eight previous World Cup appearances. That is the context the infrastructure opens into.
The formalisation of the rating process does not appear, historically, to have altered outcomes. The evidence base for this claim is the outcomes themselves: they remain consistent with what Scotland's World Cup record documents. Whether the act of committing a number before kick-off sharpens attention, distorts memory, or simply creates a record that sits alongside feeling without touching it — none of that is measurable by the mechanism as described.
What is measurable: the infrastructure exists. Returns are requested thirty minutes after full-time. The numbers will be submitted. The match will be played. The Disaster Index currently reads 5.1.
The reconciliation is scheduled for approximately 02:00 BST on 25 June.