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Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool 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 filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach 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 view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all losing something in this process.