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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new 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. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part 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 load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, product, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.