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Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing 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 Slovenia and creates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester 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 pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all losing something in this process.