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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period 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. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "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 a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

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: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow 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. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.