🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast 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

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect 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, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing something here.