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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko 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 delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, product, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.