🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run online for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start 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 he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker 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 watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.