🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And will you highlight that four 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 chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody 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 least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), 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, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? 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 the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier 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. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.