The September and October international windows were meant to ease the strain of the autumn schedule, but they have instead added to it. Across a long list of top-level names, the break delivered fresh fitness concerns for clubs already bracing for a demanding 2026\/27 campaign.<\/p>\n
Manchester United were among the hardest hit. Before the break even began, Marcus Rashford and Kobbie Mainoo withdrew from England duty, while Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko also pulled out with Slovenia. Matters deepened as the window went on, with Portugal coach Jorge Jesus saying Bruno Fernandes was \u201cplaying through pain\u201d with a \u201ccomplicated\u201d injury that ruled him out against Norway. Fernandes remained with the national side and has since recovered. Patrick Dorgu was not as fortunate, returning to Manchester after a hamstring injury with Denmark, while Noussair Mazraoui also picked up a problem in Morocco\u2019s win over Lesotho.<\/p>\n
Arsenal had their own worries. Declan Rice withdrew from England\u2019s squad before matches against Spain, Croatia and Czechia, and Kai Havertz later suffered a hamstring issue while with Germany. Martin \u00d8degaard was also unsettled after a challenge from Portugal\u2019s Bernardo Silva, then missed training before Norway faced Wales, although he stayed with the squad. Ezri Konsa was not training ahead of England\u2019s meeting with Czechia and was an unused substitute in the 2\u20130 win, though he remained with the team.<\/p>\n
Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 provided the biggest scare of the break when he appeared to suffer a knee injury for France and played only 59 minutes before leaving the squad. The positive for Real Madrid is that he appears to have avoided a major setback and is expected back for domestic action. Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 also sustained a knee injury with France, described by the French Football Federation as \u201cmild.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barcelona were again affected when Raphinha suffered a thigh injury in Brazil\u2019s 4\u20132 win over Australia and returned to Catalonia. Eric Garc\u00eda also withdrew after a knee issue with Spain.<\/p>\n
Liverpool, too, had reason for concern when Alexander Isak lasted only one game for Sweden before coming back to Merseyside with a thigh issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A crowded international break brought fresh injuries for leading Premier League and European stars across several clubs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1017,175,179,987],"tags":[242,180],"class_list":["post-21100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-barcelona","category-liverpool","category-manchester-united","category-real-madrid","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}