🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester 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 gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently 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. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

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 center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. 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 entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all losing a part of the experience here.