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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester 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 grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

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 discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.