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Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester 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 lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he meets their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence 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, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.