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Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you run online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods 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. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness 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 material, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens 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 at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.