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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long 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. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.