🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant 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 scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.