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Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of content spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He has started four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license 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 "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that happens in the background while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, we're all sacrificing something in this process.