Cristiano Ronaldo struck twice to lead Al-Nassr to an entertaining 5-2 win at Al-Ittihad on Tuesday to move to within seven points of leaders Al-Hilal. While Hilal may keep winning, their Riyadh rivals are also showing that they can keep in touch at the top of the table.
It was end-to-end stuff in Jeddah as the hosts and defending champions looked to bounce back from some indifferent form of late against the visitors from Riyadh. Despite the margin of victory in the end, the game was in the balance until midway through the second half when Ittihad were reduced to ten men following a second yellow card shown to midfielder Fabinho, with Ronaldo firing home from the spot to give Al-Nassr a 3-2 lead.
Plenty happened before then however. Ittihad were looking to recover from a disappointing campaign at the FIFA Club World Cup and also a 3-1 loss to Al-Raed in the league last week. It started well as Karim Benzema set up Abderrazak Hamdallah for the opening goal after 14 minutes, which came against the run of play.
After picking up the ball in the left corner of the area, there was still work for Hamdallah to do. He went past two defenders and then fired a low shot under the diving Abdullah Al-Mayouf, who perhaps should have done a little better.
The home crowd of more than 20,000 didn’t care but the celebrations at the Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Sports City Stadium lasted only five minutes as Al-Nassr were back on level terms. It came from the penalty spot given away by Karim Benzema. His former Real Madrid team-mate Ronaldo, who had earlier had a goal disallowed, shot home for his 18th goal of the league season.
Seven minutes before the break and the visitors were ahead. Alex Telles curled home a cross from the left. Anderson Talisca held off the challenge of two defenders, turned inside Zakaria Hawsawi before firing home from near the penalty spot.
There were then chances to equalize spurned by Romarinho and Benzema in added time but seven minutes after the restart and the scores were level once more as Hamdallah got his, and his team’s, second. Igor Coronado sent over a free-kick from the right and the Moroccan marksman rose high at the near post to head home.
Then the game turned after 67 minutes. Fabinho, already on a yellow card, was adjudged to have brought down Otavio in the area. The result was a second yellow and a penalty. This meant that in the space of a few seconds, Ittihad had lost a man and were soon behind as Ronaldo made no mistake from the spot to record goal number 19 and goal number 53 in 2023, the highest of any player in the world to move above Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe.
After that, Al-Nassr took full advantage of their one-man advantage to secure the three points. The last two goals came from Sadio Mane.
In the 76th minute, Talisca carried the ball from just inside the Ittihad half and then, just inside the area, unselfishly slipped the ball left for Mane to convert a simple chance.
Then six minutes later, Otavio advanced down the right and found the former Liverpool star making a run to the area with a perfect pass for Mane to finish calmly and smoothly, and that was that.
While the results adds to a poor December for Al-Ittihad who are now fighting for top three, for fans of Al-Nassr (who have now won their last three league games) and many neutrals, there is still the prospect of a title race with their fierce Riyadh rivals.
