Benjamin Sesko: Another Victim of Soccer's Relentless Cycle of Hot Takes and Internet Jokes

Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed a sitter. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.

Would you point out that Højlund's goal count features scores in the premier European competition while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor would you highlight that several of Højlund's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and creates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, pure interaction is your livelihood, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of content turns. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute podcast featuring the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the signing of Sesko "strange". Just before, where he qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. Nobody wants that. Simply make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

This Time of Promise and Premature Judgment

The heart of fall has long been one of my favourite periods to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, squads and strategies are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the coming months are staking their claims. The summer market is closed. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.

Yet, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a major letdown. Could Semenyo be the best player in the league right now? We need an answer now.

The Player as Patient Zero

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this context, a player caught between football's two countervailing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a in-depth analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup four times in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether he needs ten strikes to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like twelve or thirteen (Wright).

A Harsh Reality

Despite this I enjoyed watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a forward, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why 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 watch a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the time and air he is likely to receive.

There was an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that Sesko had been deemed – by a wide margin – the worst signing of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are not alone in this. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an ecosystem deliberately nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the center of this, aware on a bizarre chain-reaction level that each aspect about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must constantly be generating the strong emotions. However, in part this is a seasonal affliction, a swing of judgment most clearly and cruelly observed at this time of year, about a month after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are now being dismissed as failures. Should we start to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at their stadium in the league and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be this player taking the hit at present. But in a way, everyone is losing a part of the experience in this process.