🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points 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 taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.