🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please an answer now.

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, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: 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 gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.