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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And 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 far more chances. You run online for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long 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. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.