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?

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.

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.