Sesko: The Latest Victim of Soccer's Relentless Conveyor Belt of Opinions and Memes

Picture this: a happy Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, looking as if he just missed a sitter. Don't bother finding a real picture of him missing; background information is the enemy. Now, include some goal stats in a big, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Share the image everywhere.

Will you point out that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in Europe? Of course not. And would you note that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that his national team is far superior to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the biggest draw, and nuance is your sworn enemy.

So the cycle of online material turns. Your next task is to scan a 44-minute podcast with the legendary goalkeeper and find the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "weird". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, cut that. Nobody needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. People will be outraged.

The Season of Potential and Premature Judgment

Mid-autumn has traditionally one of my favourite periods to watch football. Leaves fall, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, all is novel and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is closed. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for similar reasons, this period has long been one of my least favourite times to read about football. For while no outcomes are decided, opinions must be formed immediately. The City winger is reborn. The German talent has been a major letdown. Is Antoine Semenyo the top performer in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

The Player as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin 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 technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a constant stream of opinions and jokes, context-free condemnations and meaningless comparisons, a square that can never truly be solved.

I do not propose to provide a in-depth analysis of Sesko's stint at United to date. The guy has started four times in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, found the net twice, and had a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And will I attempt to duplicate the pundits' notable debate "The Sesko Debate", in which two of England's leading pundits duel thrillingly on a popular show over whether he needs 10 goals to be a success this season (Neville), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why Manchester United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be right now: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most pitiless gulf between the patience and space he requires, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic conveniently stated that the player had been deemed – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a poll of football representatives. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Team social media, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially aligned along the identical rules, an environment deliberately nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Scroll, scroll, tap, scroll. What are we doing to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, knowing on some surreal butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

Indeed, partly this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a pendulum of judgment most clearly and harshly glimpsed at this time of year, about a month after the window has closed. All summer long we have been desiring footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those same players are already being disdained as failures. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the purpose of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that Sesko meets their rivals on Sunday: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own state of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on a person who went to the shops 30 minutes ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an entire sport repivoted around discussion topics and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the background while we scroll through our devices, unable to disconnect from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player taking the hit right now. However, we're all losing something in this process.