🔗 Share this article

Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time 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 grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.