🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. 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, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones 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 identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something here.