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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot 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 view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.