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Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, 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? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at 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 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: 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 pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion 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. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot 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 view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all losing something here.