Sesko: The Latest Casualty of Football's Relentless Cycle of Hot Takes and Internet Jokes

Picture the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you note that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more scoring opportunities. You run online for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to scan a lengthy podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies 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. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. Right now, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold definitive judgment, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation 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, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I enjoyed watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the freedom to rampage but also the leeway to fail. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the worst signing of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this infinite stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak waste of money. Arne Slot losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our devices, unable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is losing something here.