🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger 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.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway 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 summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces 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 submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.