Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't worry finding a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.
Would you point out that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.
Thus the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be furious.
The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions
Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite times to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.
However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.
Sesko as Patient Zero
In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.
I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at 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 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).
A Harsh Reality
Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly 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 at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.
There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are by no means alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.
The Psychological Toll
Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and traded.
And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?
The Bigger Picture
It feels appropriate that he meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.
Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.
