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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 touches. 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 podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.