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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates many more chances. You run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams 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 nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why 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 watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.