🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information 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 features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, 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 layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. 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 summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space 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 conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing something here.