🔗 Share this article

Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, 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. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. 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 summarily issued in about the time 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.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.