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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share it across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. You run social media for a major brand, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one wants that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" 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 favourite times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need a decision now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.