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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe 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 planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same 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 reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports 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 United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence 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, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.