Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, juxtapose it with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he's missed an open goal. Don't bother locating a real picture of that miss; context is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Don't forget the emojis. Share the image across all platforms.
Will you point out that Højlund's goal count features strikes in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Certainly not. Nor will you highlight that four of the Dane's goals came against Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is far superior to Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw interaction is what pays the bills, United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.
Thus the cycle of content turns. The next job is to sift through a lengthy podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". Just before, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, remove that part. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" appear together in the headline. People will be outraged.
Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred periods to observe football. Leaves fall, winds shift, squads and strategies are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. Right now, all is possibility.
However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. The German talent has been a crushing disappointment. Could Semenyo be the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer now.
And for numerous reasons, Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this context, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to generate instant verdicts, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a puzzle that can never truly be circled.
It is not my aim to provide a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at Manchester United so far. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 touches. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "The Sesko Debate", in which two famous analysts argue passionately 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).
For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a big, screeching racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. 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 watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most pitiless gulf between the time and air he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.
There was an example of this over the international break, when a viral infographic conveniently stated that Sesko had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the media are by no means alone in this. Club channels, online personalities, unidentified profiles with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an environment explicitly geared for provocation.
Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to ourselves? Do we realize, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the essential weirdness of being a player in the center of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now essentially content, commodity, public property to be packaged and exchanged.
Indeed, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, eulogising them, drooling over them. Now, just a few weeks in, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?
It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on Sunday: a team at once on a long unbeaten run at home in the Premier League and somehow in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a missing person’s report on a person who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. Alexander Isak waste of money. The coach losing his hair.
Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we watch it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that happens in the backdrop while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and further hot takes. Perhaps Sesko bearing the brunt right now. However, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience here.
A seasoned gaming enthusiast with over a decade of experience in reviewing online casinos and sharing winning strategies.
