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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.