Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share the image everywhere.
Will you mention that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You run online for a large outlet, raw engagement is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.
Thus the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.
The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment
Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred 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 staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.
Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked 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. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision immediately.
Sesko as Patient Zero
In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can not truly be solved.
I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).
A Harsh Reality
For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.
There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for provocation.
The Mental Cost
Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.
Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?
The Bigger Picture
It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.
Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.
