🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls 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"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar 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 resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester 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 precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast 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. 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 summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.