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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: 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 time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing something here.