🔗 Share this article

Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, 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 major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero 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 permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly 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 about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press 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 essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.