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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.