Sesko: Another Casualty of Soccer's Unforgiving Conveyor Belt of Opinions and Memes

Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Do not bother locating a real picture of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Certainly not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more chances. You run online for a major brand, raw engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a substantive evaluation of Sesko's time at United so far. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – 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, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the center of this, knowing on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, incapable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience here.