🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately 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 twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given 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 at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing something here.