Benjamin Sesko: The Latest Casualty of Football's Relentless Cycle of Opinions and Memes

Picture this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a dejected Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, add statistics in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart does not compete in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and creates far more chances. If you manage online for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

Thus the cycle of content spins. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with Peter Schmeichel and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to delay definitive judgment, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, context-free criticisms and meaningless contrasts, a square that can never truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive evaluation of Sesko's stint at Manchester United to date. The guy has started on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits argue passionately on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be a success this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching racing car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. 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 roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the national team pause, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that the player had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Do we realize, on some level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now basically content, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been coveting players, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are already being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the league and yet in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the shops half an hour ago. Too open. Their star past his prime. The striker an expensive flop. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the storyline of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, incapable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko taking the hit at present. However, everyone is sacrificing something here.