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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.