🔗 Share this article

Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although 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 right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester 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 ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll 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 pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, 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, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose 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 home in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.