🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund 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. Do not worry locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin 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, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. However, we're all losing something in this process.