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Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" 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 times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part 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 short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily 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. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is losing something here.