🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, 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 at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle 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.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe 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 repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.