Sesko: Another Victim of Soccer's Relentless Cycle of Opinions and Memes
Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus HĂžjlund in a Napoli shirt. Now, juxtapose that with a sad-looking Benjamin Sesko in a Manchester United kit, looking as if he just missed an open goal. Don't bother finding an actual photo of him missing; context is the enemy. Now, add statistics in a large, comical font. Don't forget some emoticons. Share it everywhere.
Will you point out that HĂžjlund's goal count includes scores in the premier European competition while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that several of HĂžjlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you run social media for a major brand, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is the thing to avoid.
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 calls the signing of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where he qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Just make sure "strange" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be outraged.
The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions
Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my preferred times to observe football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. The stars of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. Nobody is talking about the quadruple yet. Everyone are still in the game. At this precise point, anything is possible.
Yet, for similar reasons, this period has also been one of my least favourite times to read about football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. The City winger is resurgent. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.
Sesko 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 final conclusions, allowing technical development and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and memes, context-free criticisms and pointless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.
I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we analysing? And do I propose to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs 10 goals to be deemed successful this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (Wright).
A Cruel Environment
For all this I enjoyed watching Sesko at his former club: a big, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to fail. Partly this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most pitiless gap between the patience and space he requires, and the time and air he is going to get.
We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart handily informed us that Sesko had been judged â by a wide margin â the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of 20 agents. And of course, the press are not the only ones in this. Team social media, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly 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
Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite sluice of irritation is doing to our minds? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of playing in the center of this, aware on some surreal chain-reaction level that every single thing about them is now essentially content, product, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.
And yes, partly this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the cycle, a major institution that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, in part this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. All summer long we have been coveting footballers, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, just a few weeks in, many of those very players are now being disdained as failures. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker necessary? What was the purpose of another expensive buy?
A Wider Issue
It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of feverish crisis, like filing a a report on someone who popped to the store 30 minutes ago. Too open. Mohamed Salah finished. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach bald.
Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the narrative of football has started to replace football the actual game, to inflect the way we view it, an entire sport repivoted around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to disconnect from the saline drip of opinions and more takes. Perhaps this player taking the hit right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.