🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success 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 Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.