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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz 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

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down 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 needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.