🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. 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 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's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester 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 widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.