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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.