🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. 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 Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.