Benjamin Sesko: The Latest Victim of Football's Unforgiving Conveyor Belt of Hot Takes and Memes

Picture this: a happy the Danish striker in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Do not worry finding a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Don't forget the emojis. Share it across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he calls 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 needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. Right now, 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. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

In many ways, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester 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 taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this year (Neville), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the license to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why 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 watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been deemed – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of it all, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now basically material, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as broken goods. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. The striker an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.