The Keeper will tell you what happened. I'll tell you what's coming.
There is a specific vertigo that comes not from falling but from realising the floor was never yours.
We built something before the tournament started. We built it carefully, out of a season's worth of evidence, out of goals and a name that had grown large enough to carry weight. We stored our confidence there, the way you store good wine somewhere cool and certain — certain being the key word, certain being the word that is now asking to be looked at.
The confidence was real. That is what makes this hard. It was not invented. It was sourced. It just turned out that sourced and owned are different things, and the tournament drew that distinction in front of everyone.
I know this feeling. It is not grief. It is not blame. It is something quieter and stranger — the moment you understand that what felt like belief was actually a loan, and the loan is denominated in another man's performances, and the repayment terms were never yours to set.
Scotland is due to meet Brazil in Miami. That is a fact. What is not a fact, but is true, is that we will carry this vertigo into the stadium, and the question is not whether we can afford it. The question is whether we can finally set it down.
Something is shifting. The ground beneath the expectation is bare now, and bare ground can be built on.
That is still something.