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Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't worry locating an actual photo of him missing; context is your adversary. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember the emojis. Share it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And will you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars 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. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while 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 top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), 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 forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, 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 some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline 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, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is losing something in this process.