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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And 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 argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.