🔗 Share this article

Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.