Tyler Fletcher was absolutely nobody's radar three weeks ago. The lad was probably sat there booking flights to the World Cup as a supporter, maybe looking at which pubs to hit in whatever city Scotland get dumped out of in the group stage, and now he might actually be pulling on the dark blue and playing in the thing. Football is genuinely mad sometimes.
For those who missed it, Fletcher has been called up to the Scotland squad after a performance for Manchester United that lasted all of seventeen minutes. Seventeen. You can barely get through the queue at a stadium pie van in seventeen minutes. And somehow that half a half was enough to catch the eye of whoever is running the Scotland setup right now and get the phone call that changes your life completely.
Now look, Scotland fans will naturally be a bit split on this. On one hand, if the kid is good enough he is good enough, and desperate times at international level have a funny way of fast tracking careers. On the other hand, if your solution to a squad problem is a lad who has played less than a full episode of a sitcom for his club side, you might want to have a quiet word with yourself about the planning that went into this.
But here is the thing. You cannot blame Fletcher for any of this. Not even slightly. The kid said yes, as any sane human being would, and now he gets to potentially live out something most footballers only dream about. Good for him genuinely. That is not a sarcastic good for him either, that is a real one. Sometimes football throws you a door and you just have to walk through it.
Scotland at a World Cup though. Still surreal to say out loud. Fletcher could go from fan in the stands to actual participant in the space of a few weeks, which is the kind of story that reminds you why football still has the power to completely floor you when it wants to.
Let me know your thoughts.