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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing something here.