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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you note that four of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run online for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "weird" 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 preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision 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 withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.