Bukayo Saka Forced Off After 10 Minutes in Munich With a Left Thigh Problem

Bukayo Saka was forced off ten minutes into Arsenal’s Champions League match at Bayern Munich on Wednesday with a left thigh problem. He pulled up while playing a pass, with nobody near him, held his left thigh and went straight down the tunnel after a short touchline conversation with Mikel Arteta. His replacement, Eberechi Eze, scored the opening goal in a match that finished 2-2. After full time Arteta said the medical staff are concerned and that the injury does not look good. On Friday he confirmed Saka will miss Saturday’s Everton game, with a second MRI and specialist opinions still to come; no club diagnosis or timeline has been published, and the six-to-eight-week figures in circulation are reported estimates, detailed in the update below.

What happened to Saka in Munich?

Eight minutes in, Saka played a crossfield pass and went to ground straight after playing it, holding his left thigh, and signalled to the bench that he could not continue. The official match record lists the substitution at ten minutes. Before he left the pitch he spoke with Arteta and gestured toward his left quad, a detail reported by Sam Dean of The Telegraph and carried by Sports Mole. He then went down the tunnel for assessment rather than taking a seat on the bench. The mechanism is the part that worries people. There was no tackle and no contact. Muscle injuries picked up while striking a ball tend to be the kind that need a scan before anyone can talk about dates, which is why the club’s silence so far carries no information either way.

What do we know about the injury itself?

Less than the coverage around it suggests. The confirmed facts are the location, his left thigh, with Sky Sports describing a quad issue suffered as he attempted to play a pass, the minute, and that he could not play on. One report in the United States described the problem as a calf injury. The match record, the broadcast pictures and every other post-match report checked point to his left thigh and quad, and the answer Arteta actually gave names no body part at all. Arsenal had published no medical update when this piece was written. Supporters looking for a return date will not find one here, because nobody reporting honestly has one yet. A thigh strain can cost a player a week or six weeks depending on the grade, and the grade is exactly what a scan establishes.

What did Arteta say after the match?

He said the medical staff are worried, in two separate answers, and he did not dress either of them up. Speaking to TNT Sports after full time, Arteta said the staff are “a bit concerned,” that “a player that has to come off with a really sharp pain is never good news,” and that Arsenal have to “wait and see.” In his press conference he went further, saying “it doesn’t look good at all” while repeating that the club has to wait and see, Sky Sports reports. In his wider comments he said Saka was having a great game when Arsenal lost him and the side had to adapt. That is the whole of the update. Arteta named no muscle beyond the reporting of one, offered no grade and set no date, so anyone putting a number of weeks on this injury tonight is guessing. His press conference before Saturday’s Everton game, and the club’s scan reporting, are where the confirmed version arrives.

Who replaced him, and how did the game go?

Eberechi Eze, and he scored. Eze came on at ten minutes and at 25 minutes he ran onto a Martin Odegaard pass and finished low past Manuel Neuer. The assistant’s flag went up and a VAR check put the goal back on. It was a useful answer from a player who had been taken off at half time in Sunday’s win at Nottingham Forest. The depth point underneath it is sharper: with Christos Tzolis also injured, the only other wide option on Arsenal’s bench in Munich was the 16-year-old Max Dowman, Sky Sports notes. Bayern levelled at 35 minutes, Alphonso Davies finishing a Harry Kane pass, and went ahead at 61 minutes when Kane converted a penalty given for a handball by Jurrien Timber. Kane’s goal made him only the second player, after Cristiano Ronaldo, to score in 10 consecutive Champions League games, a record line this site tracks in the Champions League goals records. Arsenal levelled again at 82 minutes, Declan Rice driving a low finish past Neuer after a passing move involving Noni Madueke and Viktor Gyokeres. The final score was 2-2, per Arsenal’s own match report. The draw avoided a first defeat in 14 league phase or group stage games and keeps Arsenal unbeaten in a competition whose history is set out in the Champions League titles list. It does not change Arsenal’s position much. Saka’s scan might. The other Champions League injury story from this window came on Tuesday in Paris, where Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s ACL rupture against Barcelona gave the week a far worse version of the same headline.

Which games could he miss, and has this happened before?

The first test came on Saturday, when Arsenal beat Everton 2-0 without him. After Everton comes Fleetwood Town away in the EFL Cup on October 27, a game Arsenal would rest him for in most circumstances, and then Liverpool at Anfield on November 1, the fixture that turns a short absence into a squad problem. Beyond the club dates sits an England one: Thomas Tuchel’s side play Croatia and Spain in the Nations League in November, and talkSPORT notes the England manager will want news too. The concern is rational because it has happened often enough. Sports Mole counts three separate absence spells for Saka last season: a hamstring problem early in the campaign, a hip problem that kept him out from the end of January to the middle of February, and Achilles trouble towards the end of the season. He still finished the year as one of the first names in Arteta’s side, and this season he has four goals and one assist in ten appearances. Arsenal’s history in Europe was built by sides that kept their best players fit for the spring, a point the club’s own past underlines in the Invincibles season account. The modern version of that problem is a medical room, and Wednesday night added its most important name to the wait.

Update: Friday’s press conference rules Saka out of Everton

Update note (October 24, 2026): This article originally reported the injury with no diagnosis or timeline published. It has been updated with Mikel Arteta’s Friday press conference and the reported absence estimates.

Arteta’s Friday update was bleaker than the post-match version, and more specific about process. Saka had another MRI on Friday afternoon because there was quite a lot of fluid in the area, which made the extent of the injury difficult to understand. Arteta said the club would probably know more on Saturday, that more scans and specialist opinions are needed, and that there are no good signs. He confirmed the one certainty: Saka misses Saturday’s home game against Everton.

What Arteta did not do is put a number on the absence, and that distinction matters because numbers are now circulating. BBC reporter Sami Mokbel, cited by Fabrizio Romano, reports a minimum of six weeks, while The Scottish Sun reports the layoff could reach eight weeks and that Saka is certain to miss England’s Nations League games against Croatia and Spain next month. Khel Now’s version of the fear is a possible grade-two rupture. None of that is a club diagnosis. The honest reading is that early examinations point to a multi-week absence, the exact grade is what the further scans must settle, and the Saturday MRI result Arteta pointed to had not been published at the time of this update. The next confirmed facts arrive with that result and Saturday’s team news, and this page will be updated when they do.

Update: Saturday brings a win without Saka, but no scan verdict

Update note (October 24, 2026): This article previously carried the story through Arteta’s Friday press conference. It has been updated with Saturday’s Everton result and the latest position on Saka’s scans.

Saturday answered the team question and left the medical question open. Arsenal beat Everton 2-0 without Saka, with centre-backs Ezri Konsa and Gabriel Magalhaes both on target, to draw level with Manchester City at the top of the Premier League. Arteta used his post-match press conference to attack the schedule that produced the week: Sunday afternoon at Nottingham Forest, Wednesday night in Munich, back late on Thursday, then a Saturday 3pm kick-off. “We were given a terrible schedule,” he said. “We have overcome every hurdle, on top of some injuries.”

On Saka himself, Saturday produced no new published scan verdict. Arteta’s pre-match position, as carried by Yardbarker, was that the injury will take weeks, that the extent of it means repeating the scans in a week to ten days, and that the club must be patient for a definitive assessment. That pushes the next hard information into next week, not this weekend. Reports have meanwhile stretched the absence further: football.london puts Saka out for at least four games before the November international break, and the latest reports claim he could be out for up to eight weeks, which would rule him out of 12 matches before Christmas. Those figures remain reported estimates, not a club diagnosis, and they sit alongside the BBC’s minimum-six-weeks reporting from Friday.

There was also a fresh worry late in the Everton game. Riccardo Calafiori moved up to the left wing and Noni Madueke dropped to left-back, and Arteta said afterwards that Calafiori had a slight issue, seemingly something very small, but that he was cautious about it. With Christos Tzolis also injured and William Saliba still recovering from a back problem, Madueke and Eze are the only senior wingers available. Arsenal visit Fleetwood Town in the Carabao Cup fourth round on Tuesday, where Calafiori could be absent, before the trip to Liverpool on November 1. The next Saka facts arrive with the repeat scans in a week to ten days, and this page will be updated when they do.

Elsewhere in London on Saturday, Tottenham ended a wait of their own. Cole Palmer was sent off for the first time in his senior career as Spurs beat Chelsea 2-0 at Stamford Bridge, their first win there since 2018, with a debut goalkeeper’s own goal and a late Mathys Tel strike doing the damage either side of the dismissal.

The Bayern coach from that night is now out himself

The Bayern bench at the Allianz on Wednesday was Vincent Kompany’s, and two days later he collapsed at Bayern’s training ground. Kompany is stable in hospital but out for weeks after the training-ground collapse, with his coaching staff taking charge from Sunday’s trip to Freiburg.