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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall 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 patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, 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. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack 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 "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch 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 going to get.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.