🔗 Share this article

Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, 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 staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent 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, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. 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 handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow 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. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.