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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will 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 far more chances. You run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times 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 staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued 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 requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot 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 reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.