Musiala collapsed twice in four days, and the diagnosis is not what everyone feared

The Bayern Munich player fainted twice in four days - first against RB Leipzig, then against Heidenheim, both times a few minutes after coming on as a substitute. The 23-year-old then went on social media himself with the diagnosis: brief absence seizures stemming from a neurological dysfunction, easily treatable, with no additional health risk. „I know these things look frightening at first glance - but for me they are part of everyday life," he wrote. What went unanswered is why a young body starts shutting down precisely in pre-season, on a calendar that has not left a single real break in two years. Uli Hoeness, the man who runs the house in Munich, admitted they were lost for words. A rare admission from a club used to having an answer for everything.

Arsenal is paying 51 million pounds for Konsa because Saliba came back broken from the World Cup

Arsenal has agreed a deal with Aston Villa for Ezri Konsa - 51 million pounds plus bonuses, medical booked, the job practically done. The reason is not ambition but a hole: William Saliba came back seriously injured from the World Cup and although he does not need surgery, he is out for several months, while Jurriën Timber's groin problem has flared up again. Konsa has been at Villa since 2019 - 286 matches, 12 goals and four assists, plus ten starts in their Europa League triumph. Arsenal finally took the Premier League last year after 22 years and is now buying like a team that knows the second title is harder than the first. The question nobody in London asks out loud: how expensive is one World Cup played in the middle of an overloaded calendar?

The Premier League will broadcast conversations between referees and players

From this season Premier League viewers will hear for the first time what the referee and the players say to each other during a match. The „ref cam" system - a camera clipped by the referee's ear - has existed since last year, but until now the audio was only released after the match. Now it will run in one or two matches per round, briefly after contentious incidents, and not live. IFAB rules still ban broadcasting anything connected to VAR, and that is exactly where the league is pushing to open up. Lukas Brud of IFAB warns that such a thing could make for chaotic viewing and put referees in an unsafe position. The weekly decisions of the key match incidents panel, which has existed since 2022 and whose findings have until now stayed behind closed doors, will also be published. Transparency or a better show - in the Balkans it is worth watching which of the two it turns out to be.

Celje is one step from history, and that is our region in the Champions League

Slovenia's Celje drew 1:1 away at Slovan Bratislava in the first play-off leg and takes the return home. A team from a country of two million people is one match from the league phase of the richest competition in the world. The same evening Bodø/Glimt won 3:1 in Nijmegen and Celtic 3:0 at home against LASK - both effectively settled. Hapoel Be'er Sheva, who knocked out Red Star in the previous round, leads 2:1 against Sabah. Of that whole group, Celje is the only story with no support from a budget or a tradition. When a Slovenian club goes where Macedonian ones have long since stopped trying, it is worth asking what they do differently with almost the same money.

FIFA is falling apart from the inside, and Montenegro is among those who pulled their backing for Infantino

Sándor Csányi, one of FIFA's eight vice-presidents and president of the Hungarian Football Association, wrote in a letter to Gianni Infantino that he has lost confidence in him. The trigger is twofold: the attempt to spin the World Cup's commercial rights into a new company and sell around 20 percent of it to private investors for some 4.2 billion dollars, a project withdrawn after a storm across world football, and the dismissal of chief operating officer Kevin Lamour, who publicly criticised precisely that plan. UEFA's Aleksander Čeferin and the heads of the Asian and Concacaf confederations have already spoken out against Infantino, and the federations of Wales, Ireland, Israel and Montenegro have withdrawn their support - the Montenegrins citing problems with communication, transparency and governance. CAF and CONMEBOL still stand behind him. The elections are in March 2027, the deadline for candidacies is 18 November. From certain re-election to an open fight in a matter of months - and one small Balkan federation had the nerve to say it out loud before far bigger ones.