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

Imagine the following: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Do not worry locating a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the Champions League while his counterpart does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and context is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to scan a lengthy interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the headline. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, anything is possible.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? Please a decision immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, 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. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: given the license 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 right now: a place where "brutal verdicts" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment deliberately geared for controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on any level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must always be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It seems fitting that Sesko faces Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.