🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful 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 powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time 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 feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes 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 influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.