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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. 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 load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.