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Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Do not worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You manage online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes 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. No one wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time 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 patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league right now? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage 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 "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically operating along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.