Bostjan Cesar has reopened the Benjamin Šeško club-country argument by questioning Manchester United's handling of the striker's fitness. Slovenia have now had to do without him again, after he missed the last assembly in March and was forced to sit out the upcoming friendlies against Cyprus and Croatia.
Michael Carrick's update only sharpened the issue. He said Benjamin Šeško had been carrying a shin problem for some time and had taken another heavy knock, which meant he was not ready for the final run of the season.
Why Cesar has taken aim at United
Cesar's complaint is not really about one missed call-up. It is about how a player who was still involved so often at club level ended up unavailable when Slovenia needed him. Šeško made 30 appearances across all competitions and played 1,816 minutes, so this was not a case of a fringe forward being protected through an unused spell.
That is why Cesar's words landed. "He missed the last assembly in March and then I kind of wanted him to be absent from United for a while, but then he came back quickly and I don't think he missed a game for the club. But if a player hasn't been in a competitive rhythm for a month, then I don't see the point in him coming and playing at half-strength," he told manchestereveningnews.co.uk.
He also stressed that injuries should be handled jointly. "In cases of injuries, the national team receives all the documentation, and then we decide together with their doctors what is best," Cesar said.
Why the injury has changed the tone
The late-season shin issue has shifted the conversation away from output and towards availability. Šeško scored 11 Premier League goals and finished with 12 goal contributions across all competitions in his first campaign at Old Trafford, which is a decent return for a first year, but the final three matches were missed after the injury in the win over Liverpool.
That matters because the dispute now sits on two different readings of the same season. One version says United had a player they used regularly and then lost at the end. The other says Manchester United were dealing with a shin problem that had already flared up again, and the medical call was the sensible one.
Matjaz Kek's comments from November show this sort of friction is not new. He said the problem was solved quickly once communication was established between the club medical team and Slovenia, after reports that the national side were unhappy with a lack of contact before two World Cup qualifiers.
That is the useful context here. Cesar is not inventing a row from nowhere, but he is also challenging a club that say the striker simply was not ready. On the evidence in this case, the injury explanation looks stronger than the idea that United were casually refusing to release him.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 3 outlets. How we work →
