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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you run online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, 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 quadruple yet. Everyone 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. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player 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 not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.