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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new 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 multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.