🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel 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 acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies 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. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester 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 time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.