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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load 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.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres 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 at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

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 view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.