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Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, 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 quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why Manchester 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 watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the media are by no means alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of it all, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, product, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet 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. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all losing something in this process.