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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally 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 Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. 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 about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.