Over the past two years, Benjamin Sesko has emerged as one of Europe’s most sought-after young footballers, a Slovenian superstar of tomorrow with the world at his feet.
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.
“For Benji, this was the perfect situation,” Kircher explains. “It gave him the patience because at that time he could have moved to other clubs, bigger clubs than Red Bull Salzburg. But with these smaller steps, you can improve yourself better in professional football.
“Everything [here] is smaller, everything is more personal. Salzburg is a very personal city. So he was in a good society and a good community to help him.”
After two years of learning at Liefering, Sesko was deemed ready to make the step up to Salzburg. He won back-to-back Austrian titles, a domestic cup and was crowned Slovenia’s men’s player of the year during his two-year stint in their first team.
A return of 29 goals in 79 games for a club that has dominated Austrian football over the past decade may seem modest when compared to some of his predecessors. Erling Haaland, for instance, also scored 29 times for the club but did so in only 27 matches.
Nevertheless, Kircher regards Sesko as the most gifted player he’s seen at Salzburg given the breadth of his talents. Sesko has drawn comparisons with his idol Zlatan Ibrahimovic for his height, strength and close control, and with Haaland for his explosive acceleration.
“Even though he’s really, really tall, his speed, his technical skills and his attitude to football is really extraordinary,” Kircher says. “He did things in training that you wouldn’t expect from this kind of football player.
“Erling is, of course, unbelievable, but Benji is more of a technical player. He’s for sure a top [talent] in Salzburg. We have had a lot of other players. Dominic Szoboszlai was here, Erling, Sadio Mane, but he’s definitely with a few others let’s say, at the top.”
A move to Red Bull-owned Leipzig was the logical next step in Sesko’s career, placing him in a similar environment to Salzburg but exposing him to a higher standard of football in one of Europe’s “big five” leagues.
Similarly to Salzburg, Sesko was given time to acclimatise. Marco Rose predominantly used him as a substitute during the first half of 2023-24 before unleashing him in the New Year alongside the prolific Belgian Lois Openda, with Dani Olmo and Xavi Simons supplying the ammo.
Sesko finished the campaign in a rich vein of form with goals in seven consecutive games at the end of the Bundesliga season. Only seven players in the division bettered his overall tally of 14, 11 of which were scored from 27 January onwards.
Slovenian fans will hope that he can carry that form into the Euros and fire them into the last 16 in a group containing Denmark, Serbia and England.
That purple patch has inevitably reignited Premier League interest. Arsenal are reportedly the favourites to buy Sesko given their upward trajectory under Mikel Arteta, with speculation further fuelled by the attendance of his agent Elvis Basanovic at the Emirates last season.
Chelsea and Tottenham are other London clubs expected to be in the market for a striker this summer and are bound to be tracking Sesko considering they have both prioritised the signing of younger players in recent windows.
Extracting him from Leipzig this summer could prove difficult, though, especially after Rose’s side secured a place in next season’s Champions League. Aware as Leipzig are of their place in football’s food chain, they will be reluctant to lose a player of such promise after just one season.
But the Premier League seems like an obvious next destination for a player who has methodically mapped out his path to the top. Sesko’s physical and technical attributes would be well-suited to English football. Based on how his career has played out so far, it could be a slam dunk for whoever gets him.