🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls 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"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, 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 summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "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 (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration 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 time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped 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 talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.