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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "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 season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom 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 widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

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

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.