🔗 Share this article

Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel 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 headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis 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 mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, 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 chart handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.