By Tim Stannard

1) Ronaldo faces Messi in eternal duel for bathroom decorations

There was time when mind-numbingly pointless, going nowhere, entrenched footballing arguments over who was the best between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo only came to a head once a year. Although as an aside, it actually takes place for every nano-second of every day somewhere in the world. Like the rumbling of New York traffic. Never stops. Ever. 

That moment was ahead of the Ballon d’Or awards in January which, for a wonderful brief period of years, was a joint effort from FIFA and the longer-running France Football prize. But then the two sides divorced and the battle has to take place twice a year. 

The first of those arrives on Monday with FIFA’s ‘The Best’ which takes place in London with the aim of arbitrarily choosing the best player, coach, goalkeeper (not a normal player, apparently) and goal of the year. Basically, Cristiano Ronaldo, Coach Zizou and probably a political nod to Gigi Buffon before the Juventus man retires. The show could probably take about 11 minutes to get through all the business of the day, but will undoubtedly take a good seven hours of the time of the host Idris Elba.

Sports Burst can imagine that the Locker Room will have a blast from 7:30PM ET / 4:30PM PT picking through the final decisions. And don’t forget to tune into the XTRA at 7PM ET / 4PM PT to catch the latest edition of Team Messi v Team Ronaldo, to see who won the weekend. Slim pickings to go on to be fair. 

2) Mbappe is Europe’s top Golden Boy

While ‘The Best’ works as a prize in terms of its name, The Golden Boy award for best U21 player in Europe needs a bit of a rebrand. 

But that’s what Italian paper Tuttosport are going with the decision to hand this year’s prize to Kylian Mbappe. Runners up were Barcelona's Ousmane Dembele and Marcus Rashford of Manchester United. The PSG man will be hoping that he has better luck than last year’s winner, Renato Sanches, who is now on loan with Swansea City. 

Speaking of all things PSG, Sunday’s le Classique was all with the drama after a late equalizing goal for the capital city side against Marseille and Neymar’s sending off for picking up two yellow cards in quick succession. After the game, Neymar complained about being kicked around the pitch and that the match official only had one thing in mind anyway. "The referee did what he wanted, which was to send me off and appear more than the players."

3) Koeman canned after Arsenal debacle 

Breaking news! Everton have sacked Ronaldo Koeman.

The Goodison Park outfit are fresh from a crushing 2-5 home defeat to Arsenal – bad enough – but the result pushed the Merseysiders into the relegation zone in the Premier League standings. Just for good measure, Everton are also bottom of their group in the Europa League, too, without a win in three.

Time for a quick plug of some games taking place live on beIN SPORTS on Monday. The ever-watchable Real Sociedad are facing Espanyol followed immediately by the ever-struggling Deportivo hosting Girona. The action starts from 1:50PM ET / 10:50AM PT. 

4) WTA’s Singapore sling to find best in the world

But that’s not all going on across the network on Monday. There be top action tennis. TOP. The season finale WTA finals are taking place in Singapore. The eight best players on the circuit right now are in action with seven standing a chance of finishing the year at the top of the rankings. 

Karolina Pliskova and Garbine Muguruza were the big winners from Sunday in their respective group clashes against Venus Williams and Jelena Ostapenko respectively. Monday is already underway live on beIN SPORTS with Simone Halep taking on Carolina Garcia while Elina Svitolina faces Caroline Wozniaki straight after. 

WHAT IS SPORTS BURST?

The life philosophy of Sports Burst is that if you are not upsetting someone, then you are not trying hard enough. SB is a daily trawl and troll through the morning's sports news to bring you fact-nuggets to make you both smile and swear. Hopefully at the same time.