🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot 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 entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all losing something here.