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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Then, include statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a viral chart handily stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all losing something in this process.