🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" 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 time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something here.