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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total 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 of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes 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 Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down 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 requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.