Tuesday morning Deal: Arsenal target former basketball prodigy who is more technical than Haaland-Realsport
Arsenal and Chelsea have been linked with the RB Leipzig forward who turned 21 at the end of May while Manchester United tried to snare him from the Red Bull stable when he was a teenage sensation at Salzburg.
Sesko’s potential has been clear for some time. He has already accumulated almost 200 senior appearances for three clubs, Leipzig, Salzburg and FC Liefering, Salzburg’s sister side, and the Slovenian national team.
In October 2021, he became his country’s youngest-ever goalscorer in a World Cup qualifier against Malta a few months after his 18th birthday. Zlatko Zahovic, Slovenia’s all-time top scorer with 35 goals has already conceded that honour will pass to Sesko, who has 11 from his first 28 caps. “I look at my record like it’s gone,” he said in 2022.
Sesko is the typical teenage prodigy, but his sporting destiny could have veered off in another direction had he pursued his other major passion instead.
“Benjamin Sesko was an excellent basketball player. Have you heard about that?” Red Bull Salzburg’s media officer Christian Kircher asks i.
“I think he was still 14 or 15, something like that and still thinking about playing for Slovenia’s national team in basketball.”
Sesko is an avid basketball fan. He follows the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, whose star player is his compatriot, Luka Doncic, and had a court installed in his back garden in Leipzig upon moving in last summer.
A video of him dislodging a basketball that had become stuck between the basket and the board with his foot in a superhuman feat of athleticism became a social media hit in his younger days.
He has a shooting guard’s physique too, albeit slightly on the small side by NBA standards at 6ft 4in. Naturally tall and slender, he was encouraged to play as a goalkeeper in his youth by his father Ales, a former shot-stopper himself at Slovenian side NK Radece where Sesko Jr also spent time as a youngster.
Sensibly, given his subsequent evolution as a centre-forward, he swerved that piece of advice and a record-shattering run of goalscoring during Sesko’s mid-teens effectively made the decision to choose football over basketball for him.
Sesko’s youth-level exploits captured national attention in the 2017-18 season when he scored 59 goals in 23 games for NK Krsko’s U15s.
“Benji was practically unstoppable with us. Although he looked a little funny with his long legs and chubby posture, he was not funny at all when he got the ball at his feet!” Krsko’s sporting director Rok Zorko recalls.
“He would spend hours and days on the street playing football and basketball. Although he was not nearly developed yet, he was extremely fast, had a long stride and an excellent shot with both feet.
“In two years of playing for us, he scored more than 100 goals in all matches. This is definitely a record [for us]. I think that he surpassed all records in Slovenia at that age as well.”
Sesko continued his ascent at Domzale, which led to another crossroads moment. At 16, Sesko had offers from a host of major clubs including Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Ajax, but he chose to continue his footballing education in Salzburg instead.
No sooner had the ink on his contract dried than Sesko was loaned to FC Liefering, a rite of passage for most prodigies who pass through Salzburg’s doors.
Salzburg are a finishing school for Europe’s elite, but Liefering are their equivalent, providing teenagers a platform to hone their skills in a competitive environment. Liefering finished 6th out of 16 clubs in Austria’s second-tier last season with an average age of 18.9 years.
