🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would 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 creates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast 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

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom 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 summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker 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 somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something in this process.