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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something here.