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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

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 imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" 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 needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.