🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing 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 make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe 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 planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester 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 judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.