Sesko: Another Casualty of Soccer's Relentless Conveyor Belt of Hot Takes and Memes

Imagine the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, place it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, add statistics in a big, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Post the image everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage social media for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone 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. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and taken a grand total of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was an example of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing something in this process.