Benjamin Sesko: The Latest Casualty of Soccer's Unforgiving Conveyor Belt of Hot Takes and Memes

Imagine the following: a happy Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he's missed an open goal. Don't worry locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Then, add statistics in a large, silly font. Remember the emojis. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor would you note that several of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that his national team is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you run social media for a large outlet, raw interaction is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of online material spins. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. Nobody wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and jokes, out-of-context criticisms and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

Despite this I loved watching him at his former club: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic handily informed us that the player had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about players is now essentially content, product, public property to be repackaged and traded.

Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of judgment most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Did Arsenal actually need Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at home in the league and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like submitting a a report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Too open. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and immediate responses, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and more takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit right now. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.