When Jason Wilcox and Omar Berrada met Sir Jim Ratcliffe at a summit in Iceland recently, they set about tackling a glaring problem: their team could not score goals.
Manchester United, known worldwide for free-flowing football and ‘attack, attack, attack’ finished 16th-lowest scorers in the Premier League last season, with nobody hitting double figures.
Only three players in Ruben Amorim’s team scored more than four and strikers Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee – brought in for a combined £115million – hit just seven goals between them. And so director of football Wilcox and CEO Berrada went to work.
Matheus Cunha arrives on the back of 15 league goals at Wolves last season, while Bryan Mbeumo hit 20 for Brentford. But Amorim and United wanted more.
That is why they have gone so hard for Benjamin Sesko, the £74million man who has scored more goals in Europe’s top five leagues (39) than any other player under the age of 23 in the last two years. He sits just in front of Jude Bellingham (38), Florian Wirtz (34) and Jamal Musiala (33) in that regard, which is decent company to keep.
The hope is that Sesko is the final piece of a jigsaw that is being carefully constructed. Not a Hail Mary attempt at success.
The hope is that Benjamin Sesko is the final piece of a Manchester United jigsaw that is being carefully constructed. Not a Hail Mary attempt at success
Joshua Zirkzee and Rasmus Hojlund cost a combined £115million for just four league goals last season
What he will bring most immediately is a presence and a threat in the air that United have lacked badly in recent years, with Hojlund too easy to bully off the ball.
United ranked dead last for headed goals in the Premier League last season with just four. Across the past two seasons that total is 12. Sesko, at 6ft 5in with a trademark gigantic leap from his days as a basketball-obsessed kid, has scored eight on his own in that same period in the Bundesliga.
Sesko will bring pace too – a key attribute Amorim wants to help drive the team up the pitch in transition and to stretch the play. Last season his top speed of 22.18mph put him 26th among 492 players in the Bundesliga. A year prior he was quick enough for 15th spot.
His arrival would allow Cunha and Mbeumo to act as the de facto No 10s – neither having to masquerade as a No 9 – in Amorim’s 3-4-3 system and for Bruno Fernandes to conduct the play from a deeper position. It would allow for a more attacking setup with Amad Diallo at wing-back and just one defensive-minded midfielder next to Fernandes.
‘His potential is unlimited,’ Mirsad Mujakic, who coached Sesko at Under 15s level with NK Krsko, tells Mail Sport.
‘I believe he can be even better than (Erling) Haaland because he is a such a hard worker. He will do everything and more to succeed.
‘That’s why I think he will quickly show in England why he is among the best strikers in the world.’
Mujakic also scoffs at the idea that Sesko, who scored 21 goals for RB Leipzig last season, is a gamble that could backfire for United, who paid a similar fee for Hojlund only to see him struggle under the bright lights of the Premier League.
Sesko will look to link up with United’s attacking midfielder Bryan Mbeumo, Bruno Fernandes and Matheus Cunha
‘We all understand what English league means across the world, that it is the best league in the world and that the smallest details make all the difference,’ he said.
‘That’s why I think he’s the right person for the Premier League with his work ethic and his lifestyle. Anyone who doubts his quality will change their mind after just a few games.’
If Ratcliffe had it his way in the transfer market, he would have Manchester United swing for potential every time.
‘What I would rather do is find the next (Kylian) Mbappe, rather than spend a fortune just trying to buy success. It’s not that clever, is it, buying Mbappe, in a way?’ Ratcliffe mused on a podcast last year.
‘Anybody could figure that one out. But what’s much more challenging is to find the next Mbappe, the next (Jude) Bellingham or the next Roy Keane. The solution isn’t spending a lot of money on a couple of great players. They’ve done that, if you look at the last 10 years.
‘The first thing we need to do is get the right people in the right boxes, managing and organising the club. We must make sure we get recruitment right, such a vital part of running a football club is getting recruitment right, finding new players.’
This mindset chafed with that of Amorim who made it known to the powers that be that time was not on his or this team’s side. He needed Premier League proven players who could hit the ground running in August, not find their feet in February.
It was why Amorim so badly wanted Cunha from Wolves, and then Mbeumo of Brentford. It was why Amorim was leaning towards a move for 29-year-old Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins after Jason Wilcox pushed for 22-year-old Liam Delap, and director of recruitment Christopher Vivell lobbied hard for Sesko. In the end, Vivell won out.
Sesko first went to Red Bull Salzburg when he left his homeland, and then to RB Leipzig
While United’s long-standing interest in Sesko stretches back six years to when he was a wiry teenager playing for NK Domzale in Slovenia (more on that in a minute), the role of Vivell here cannot be understated.
It is three years to the week since Vivell, who became director of recruitment at United in February, pulled off the deal to bring Sesko to RB Leipzig, having previously masterminded his move to Red Bull Salzburg.
At the time of the Leipzig deal, Vivell said: ‘Benjamin Sesko is among the top international talents and has enormous potential to become a top player. He has everything it takes, is extremely fast, has tremendous jumping ability, and is very strong in the air.’
Ratcliffe deeply admires and trusts Vivell’s player identification and his concerted push for Sesko above all other striker targets has not gone unnoticed internally.
Credited with identifying Dayot Upamecano, Karim Adeyemi, Josko Gvardiol, Dominik Szoboszlai, Sesko, Ibrahima Konate, Patson Daka, Hwang Hee-chan, and to a lesser extent Haaland, trust in Vivell from Ineos is clear to see.
This is a swing for potential by United, make no mistake about it. The fee is high – £65.1m plus £8.7m in add-ons, – and is not quite how Ratcliffe’s dream was explained in that podcast a year ago.
The potential upside is that of a genuine, bona fide superstar. The downside is of a player who gets totally overwhelmed by English football, as with Hojlund.
They could have had him for a tiny fraction of that £74m total fee six years ago, but he wasn’t a gamble Manchester United were willing to take when Domzale sought €2million euros (£1.74m). Instead they swung for Ajax’s Dillon Hoogewerf as the future superstar-in-waiting.
United overlooked Sesko six years ago and signed Dillon Hoogewerf (centre) instead
Sesko would go to Red Bull Salzburg and light it up, scoring 29 times in 79 games and winning a trio of Austrian Bundesliga titles. Hoogewerf signed his first professional contract in March 2020 but left for Borussia Monchengladbach’s reserves in 2022 without ever looking like fulfilling potential for the first team.
Three years later and it was Sesko not willing to take the gamble. ‘For a lot of players the desire for money and a big club takes over, that’s why I think it’s better to take a smaller step first and build yourself up gradually,’ he said in 2023 when on his way to Leipzig. ‘That way you get minutes, keep developing and eventually reach the top level when you’re truly ready.’
He described himself then as being at 60 per cent of his potential. Now United are all-in on having Sesko as a centrepiece in their Project 150 vision to win the Premier League by 2028, the club’s 150th anniversary year.
In Ayden Heaven (18), Diego Leon (18), Leny Yoro (19) and Patrick Dorgu (20), Ineos are swinging at potential in a bid to turn Manchester United around, and Sesko fits that theme too.
Asked while at RB Leipzig how to turn around a club in crisis, Vivell was clear and concise in his answer. ‘Three things: a good team, a good coach, and a good plan,’ he said. Now the swing for Sesko will tell us just how good a team, coach and plan Manchester United really have.
