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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.