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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. You run online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.