Benjamin Sesko: Another Casualty of Football's Relentless Cycle of Hot Takes and Internet Jokes

Imagine the following: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's tally includes strikes in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You manage social media for a large outlet, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are still fresh, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is shut. Nobody is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer 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 inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And 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 duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester 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 load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the national team pause, when a viral infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of 20 agents. Naturally, the press are by no means alone in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of it all, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, praising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.