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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded 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 handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some 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 some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.