🔗 Share this article

Picture the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.