Sesko: Another Casualty of Soccer's Unforgiving Conveyor Belt of Hot Takes and Internet Jokes

Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the demand to produce instant verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United so far. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a powerful, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" 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 international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been coveting players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko meets their rivals 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 a report on a person who went to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.