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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup 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 duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.