Benjamin Sesko: The Latest Casualty of Soccer's Relentless Conveyor Belt of Hot Takes and Internet Jokes

Imagine this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, include some goal stats in a big, silly font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the title. People will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, allowing technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be solved.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of fake followers: all parties with skin in the game is now basically operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of this, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. But also, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of opinion most clearly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, many of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It seems fitting that Sesko meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Maybe we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around discussion topics and reaction, an activity that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.