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

Picture the following: a happy the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Do not worry finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include statistics in a big, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally includes scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in continental tournaments? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and creates many more scoring opportunities. You manage social media for a large outlet, pure engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the cycle of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a lengthy interview featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "weird". Just before, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Just ensure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite times to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is mentioning the multiple trophies yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The need to delay definitive judgment, allowing layers of technical texture and tactical sophistication to mature. And the demand to produce instant definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and memes, context-free condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. The guy has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and had a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits duel passionately on a podcast over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this year (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, fast sports car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: given the freedom to rampage but also the freedom to fail. And in part this is why Manchester United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in about the time it takes to load a short advertisement, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

There was a case of this during the national team pause, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been judged – by a wide margin – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not alone in such behavior. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly geared for provocation.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless stream of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that every single thing about players is now basically material, product, open-source property to be packaged and traded.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the cycle, a big club that must constantly be generating the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most visibly and harshly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, just a few weeks in, a lot of those very players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to worry about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the background while we scroll through our devices, incapable to detach from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience here.