Scotland has discovered something between a statistical anomaly and a religious experience: Lyndon Dykes, the striker who scores so infrequently that when he does, the entire nation wins. This is not hyperbole. This is now national policy.
Dykes arrives at the World Cup as a kind of footballing oracle. He doesn’t score often—let’s be honest, he barely scores at all—but when he does, something transcendent happens. Scotland wins. The correlation is so perfect, so improbable, that Scottish fans have begun treating his goal-scoring record like ancient prophecy. Tarot readers are consulting his shot maps. Conspiracy theorists are mapping his rare finishes against lunar cycles. Someone has definitely started a subreddit.
The absurdity is delicious. Here is a striker whose goal-per-game ratio would make a midfielder weep, yet he has somehow become the linchpin of national hope. It’s as if Scotland has collectively decided that scarcity equals potency. If Dykes scored regularly, we reason, his magic would dilute. His power comes from restraint. From the void.
Against Morocco, the nation will not be watching a footballer. We will be watching a totem. A bald, belligerent oracle in a Scotland shirt, carrying the weight of a country’s improbable belief that rarity and victory are mysteriously, cosmically linked.
This is either genius or madness. Given that we’re placing World Cup hopes on a striker’s drought-breaking mysticism, it’s probably both.