The Keeper keeps the record. Wullie keeps the faith.
There is a particular way Scotland supporters comfort themselves after a wound, and it has nothing to do with football. It involves naming men. David Moyes, 62, contracted to Ipswich Town. Ange Postecoglou, contracted to Tottenham Hotspur. Neither approached, neither available, neither aware a public campaign has been conducted on their behalf. BBC Sport Scotland, performing due diligence, has treated the distance between wanting and negotiating as a story. Which it is — only not the story anyone thinks they are telling. The fantasy displaces the loss. That is its job. What nobody wants to examine is the damage it does on the way out.
The argument worth making here is not in defence of Steve Clarke. Clarke defends himself by the fact of existing — he is the manager who got Scotland to a World Cup, who watched them beat Haiti, who will send eleven men out against Brazil in Miami. His record, whatever one thinks of the Morocco defeat, is not the subject. The subject is what the fantasy reveals about the people conducting it. When supporters name replacements who manage at a level Scotland cannot currently offer, they are not expressing ambition. They are confessing that the actual job — managing the Scotland national team through to and at a World Cup — is a thing they cannot quite take seriously. The role needs saving by a name that belongs somewhere grander. That is not flattery to the names. That is contempt for the position.
The pattern is established, as the record shows. Scotland suffers a difficult result, the conversation turns to an unavailable manager, and that manager turns out to be occupied, hypothetical, or not yet aware of the honour. The comfort is consistent because the need is consistent. What it requires, always, is a figure from elsewhere — someone who has proven themselves in a context where Scotland's specific gravity does not apply. The 70-odd seconds it took Ismael Saibari to score from a Brahim Díaz pass in Foxborough were painful. The Morocco loss was real. But the correct response to a real defeat is not to imagine a different manager standing in the same rain. It is to look at what happened and credit it with the seriousness it deserves.
Scotland are at a World Cup. Their ninth men's appearance. A team that beat Denmark 4-2 in November, that sent McLean's stoppage-time shot from his own half into the net and into the qualification history books. A team with one more group game, against Brazil, at Hard Rock Stadium, which is still in front of them. The job ahead of whoever manages this squad — now, next year, beyond — is the highest honour in Scottish football, not a stepping stone for someone doing it a favour. Every time the fantasy gets circulated as comfort, the job shrinks a little. The faith Wullie keeps is not faith in any individual name. It is faith that the position is worth taking seriously, that the country behind it is worth the full weight of someone's ambition, not the leftover attention of someone whose real business is elsewhere. Scotland named at a World Cup. Glass up. The job is real.