🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, 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 mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He 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 exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes 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 enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. 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 handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.