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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not bother locating a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls the acquisition of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of it all, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that happens in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something in this process.