🔗 Share this article

Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar 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 reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. 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 precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful 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 Leipzig: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot 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.