🔗 Share this article

Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part 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 load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same 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 point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe 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 entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing something in this process.