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Imagine this: 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 an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: 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 submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.