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Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless 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 a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative 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 reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.