Benjamin Sesko: Another Victim of Football's Relentless Conveyor Belt of Opinions and Memes

Picture the following: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place it with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; background information is your adversary. Then, add some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Post it everywhere.

Will you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in Europe? Certainly not. And would you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage online for a major brand, pure interaction is your livelihood, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "strange" and "the player" appear together in the title. The audience will be outraged.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone 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 consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please a decision now.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's stint at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to attack but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in about the time it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this over the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently informed us 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 this. Club channels, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with skin in the game is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. However, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of 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 at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, we're all losing a part of the experience in this process.