🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". 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. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, 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 over the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, 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, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.