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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Now, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you run online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing something here.