Cristiano Ronaldo’s wait for a first major trophy with Al-Nassr continues after they were upset 1-0 at home by Gamba Osaka in the AFC Champions League Two final.<\/p>\n
Playing in front of 26,000 fans at their King Saud University Stadium, Saudi side Al-Nassr were favourites to win Asian football’s second-tier club competition – equivalent to Europe’s Europa League.<\/p>\n
But Deniz Hummet scored for the visitors against the run of play in Riyadh on Saturday, latching on to Issam Jebali’s through ball to fire home in the 30th minute.<\/p>\n
Gamba Osaka then held on in the second half to become the first Japanese club to win the competition, while preventing Al-Nassr becoming the first Saudi winners. <\/p>\n
Ronaldo’s latest setback came four days after a last-gasp own goal by goalkeeper Bento kept the Portugal forward waiting for his first piece of major silverware since joining Al-Nassr in January 2023.<\/p>\n
That allowed Saudi Pro League title rivals Al-Hilal to claim a 1-1 draw and remain within two points of leaders Al-Nassr with one game left.<\/p>\n
However, Ronaldo’s side will become Saudi champions for the 11th time – and first since 2019 – if they win at home to Damac on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Al-Hilal, the 21-time champions, play their final game at Al-Fayha at the same time on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t get what we wanted here but there is one more final for us, the Saudi Pro League title, which is very important to us,” said Al-Nassr’s coach Jorge Jesus.<\/p>\n
“We have five days to recover and prepare and there is no time for grieving. We have to get going again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo’s wait for a first major trophy with Al-Nassr continues after they were upset 1-0 at home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-23778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-osaka","8":"tag-japan","9":"tag-osaka"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}