My taxi from the Kingdom Arena dropped me outside of Al Shabab Club Stadium with twenty minutes to go to kick-off. I’d already bought my ticket online for forty riyals, which is around eight quid.
I was welcomed by just about everyone who caught my eye. Maybe I stand out as an elderly Brit. I was also asked at least twice if I was there ‘to watch Ronaldo’. Truth is, I’ve little interest in him. If anything, his presence just makes it harder for me to get tickets and clogs the pavement up with people who might only go to a game once or twice a year.
Al Shabab Club Stadium is nominally forty years old, but it was just about fully re-built a couple of years ago. The new version holds fifteen thousand, but even with Ronaldo making an appearance, the capacity wasn’t tested.
My seat was along the side, about level with the edge of the penalty area. We were all given a large plastic flag to wave and some of us also received a goody bag containing stickers and a badge. I gave mine to the very polite small kid behind me who I suspected might have appreciated them more than I would.
Al Nassr had a few hundred fans behind the goal to my left and probably a fair number dotted around the rest of the stadium. Their season has got off to a poor start, albeit unbeaten, but too many drawn games has seen them slip behind leaders Al-Hilal. Al-Shabab were still in touch at the top end, but realistically wouldn’t be challenging for the title.
For those with an interest in how Ronaldo got on, he was ok. Just ok. He didn’t move around much and left the pressing to others whilst trying to ignore the frequent and tiresome chants of ‘Messi, Messi’.
Nothing of note happened until twenty minutes from time when Laporte put Al-Nassr a goal up. The visitors thought that they had added a second six minutes from time, but with the home fans streaming out it was chalked off by a VAR check, causing a lot of those Al-Shabab fans to make an about-turn and head back to their seats.
Their return appeared justified on ninety minutes when an own goal levelled the score. It wasn’t to last though and Al-Nassr were awarded a penalty seven minutes into added time. Bizarrely, there were chants of ‘Ronaldo’ from many of the fans around me who to all intents had previously appeared to be supporting the home side.
Ronaldo made no mistake from the spot to move one nearer to his target of a thousand goals. You’d think that would have been it, but with twelve minutes of added time elapsed a VAR penalty was awarded to Al-Shabab for a challenge that had taken place a good two minutes earlier. With the home fans holding their breath, their penalty came back off the post and was hoofed away with the final kick of the game. I’m glad I didn’t leave early.
On the way out I struck up a conversation with a teenage Shabab fan. He was bemoaning the lack of investment in his team and the unfairness of only having seen his club win one league title. I pointed out that in fifty years of watching the Boro, I’d never seen my club win the top division and that even if I’d been a hundred years older it would have been no different.
Tags: Al Shabab, Saudi Pro League
Trail of the Lion King 
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