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Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead 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, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer 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 two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate 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 he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.