Sesko: Another Victim of Football's Relentless Conveyor Belt of Hot Takes and Internet Jokes

Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, 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. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? Nor do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, commodity, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be producing the strong emotions. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on the weekend: 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 a report on someone who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable 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.