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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

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

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", 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 season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.