🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. 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. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports 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 Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.