🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

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

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had 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 famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped 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 immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.