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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, 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 layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap 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 national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped 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 talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.