🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. 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 pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.