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Imagine this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times 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 coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer immediately.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest 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 largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.