After Sunday’s frustrating match against lowly Al-Feiha ended in a scoreless draw, Al-Nassr’s chances of winning the Saudi Professional League were severely damaged. Cristiano Ronaldo stormed off the pitch in frustration.
Leaders Al-Ittihad defeated Al-Wehda 2-1 to take advantage of the opportunity to pull ahead of Al-Nassr by three points with seven games left. Al-Ittihad had an advantage over Al-Nassr in their head-to-head matchup.
In the 68th minute, Ronaldo, 38, who joined Al-Nassr in January under a contract worth more than 200 million euros ($218 million), kissed the ball after hitting it into goalkeeper Vladimir Stojkovic’s hands.
The Portuguese captain missed two shots over the crossbar in a six-minute span as Stojkovic appeared to have a trance over the ball. Brazilian Anderson Talisca, the league’s leading scorer, was also ineffective.
When Ronaldo’s goal streak came to an end with 11 goals in 10 league games, he appeared enraged and removed the captain’s armband, leaving it in his hand.
Rudi Garcia, the coach of Al-Nassr, was not happy with either the performance or the outcome.
Through a translator, the French coach told the Saudi Sports Company (SSC), “The result is definitely bad and we are not happy.
“I’m not happy with how the players performed. I asked them to match their performance from the previous game (a 5-0 win over Al-Adalah), but they didn’t.
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Al-Nassr, who won the championship for the final time in 2019, will play a pivotal match against Al-Hilal, the reigning champion and fourth in the standings, the outcome of which could decide who wins the championship.
Seven games remain. We will try to rebound. We realise it won’t be simple after we dropped two points, but anything is possible.
Al-Feiha shared an edited photo of their captain Sami Al-Khaibari playing chess in front of Cristiano Ronaldo on Twitter, emulating a well-known commercial that featured rivals Lionel Messi and Cristiano.
More than 1.9 million people viewed the image with the caption “checkmate,” as opposed to fewer than 100,000 people who viewed other page posts.
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