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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, 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. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window 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 a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing something here.