Sesko: Another Victim of Soccer's Relentless Cycle of Hot Takes and Memes

Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, place that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he's missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Post it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, anything is possible.

However, 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. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer immediately.

The Player 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 imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. He 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 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the same principles, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some 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 a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now basically material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like filing a a report on someone who popped 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 started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we browse through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. Perhaps this player bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.