The Tartan Army crossed an ocean and became the story, showing confidence, imagination and belonging that the team itself seemed to lack. What if Scotland has not failed to produce greatness at all, but simply taught its young people to seek it in the stands?

Scotland are back at a World Cup, but the old problems remain: fear, technical limitations and a system that keeps mistaking reviews for reform. Why does a nation this obsessed with football remain so poor at producing tournament-ready players?

AI may improve the individual object while narrowing the collective imagination. Each product looks finished. Everything begins to look the same. The result is not beige, because the modern machine knows beige looks corporate. So it gives us fluorescent pink: loud sameness, mass-produced rebellion, individuality available in six competing brands.

Scotland did not just arrive in Boston for a World Cup. It arrived with an antidote: joy without branding, identity without weaponry, and a national instinct for putting traffic cones on pomposity. The Tartan Army reminded a city what it feels like to be silly, unguarded and completely yourself.

The authentic voice of the streets is translated, captioned, polished until it can be dissected in Guardian think‑pieces, consumed by middle‑class voyeurs who treat our lives like edgy exhibits rather than lived realities. This is why we don’t step forward. Why we don’t submit our manuscripts or scripts. Because standing at the gates are the cultural custodians: well‑spoken, well‑heeled, Oxbridge‑seasoned.

Now everything is shit. Plastic and polished, predictable and soulless. Every song sounds like a template: click-track drums, a fake build, a drop made by some guy hunched over a laptop in a bedroom that smells like Monster Energy.

We live in an era where talent is not enough. In fact, it might be a hindrance. Because while you were honing your craft, someone else was learning how to go viral. The algorithm doesn't want your genius, mate. It wants your pliability. Your photogenic smirk and ability to dance on cue. It wants quick cuts, controversy, and a hook in the first three seconds. Greatness needs time. The algorithm gives you milliseconds. It doesn't reward soul. It rewards sensation.

One you feel in your chest. The song I wrote, "Japanese Lights," isn’t just about this man wandering Shibuya or getting lost in the side streets of Shinjuku. It’s about all of us trying to find ourselves in a world that stopped resembling home sometime around 2007.

Oasis are playing shows this year, and it couldn’t come soon enough. Not just for the nostalgia, not just for the songs, but because the world has changed—and not necessarily for the better. And I believe Oasis, in all their swaggering, unapologetic, two-fingered glory, are the antidote to everything that’s gone wrong.

Scottish football is a museum piece disguised as a sport. A game fuelled by passion but throttled by parochialism. A national pastime clinging to relics of a bygone age that in truth was never as golden as we pretend.