🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions 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 argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: 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 United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand 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, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing something here.