🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you note 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 far more scoring opportunities. You run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate 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 players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.