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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest 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 pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed 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 harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.