Trail of the Lion King

After the trip to Europe I was back in the Middle East with another fixture involving Ronaldo’s team Al-Nassr. The assumption when he signed was that he would elevate the club to another level, but the reality has been that they’ve slipped from the top of the table to a position where the title is now out of their hands.

There was speculation in the media this week that Ronaldo might retire and take up an ambassadorial role with Real Madrid. I couldn’t see that happening whilst he still believes that he’s good enough to lead the line for them. I doubt the Al-Nassr chairman would shed too many tears if Ronaldo were to walk away from his contract though, as he was quoted saying that he’d only been ripped off twice in his life, firstly when he ordered three kebabs and only two were delivered and secondly, when he signed Ronaldo. I felt his pain. Nobody should ever be a kebab short.

I took a taxi to Mrsool stadium arriving a couple of hours early to avoid the jams. There’s decent wifi though so it wasn’t much of a hardship. The taxi driver was keen to wait for me coming out afterwards, four hours later, so either business is slow at the moment or else I’m paying too much.

I’d noticed quite a few Japanese fellas in the concourse, some of them wearing the shirts of Urawa Red Diamonds. They were presumably in town for the Asian Champions League Final the following day and had taken the opportunity to watch another game whilst here. I like that. I discussed Al-Hilal’s prospects in that game with a couple of blokes selling coffee and they were fairly bullish about the Saudi team’s chances. I wasn’t quite so sure as I’ve seen some poor performances from them over the season. Maybe they can lift their game when it matters.

I’d tried to get a ticket for that final, but it appeared to be sold out. However, there were three young lads sat in front of me and one of them mentioned that he was an Al-Hilal fan. He seemed to have buying privileges that I didn’t and so he bought me a ticket and transferred it via WhatsApp. Technology, eh. The only downside of the transaction was that whilst we were arsing about with the phones, I missed the opening goal. Ronaldo providing the perfect retort to his chairman five minutes into the game.

In a way though, I could see the chairman’s point. Ronaldo had a decent game but too many of his team-mates weren’t on the same wavelength and often didn’t anticipate what would have been a killer pass or notice until it was too late that he’d made the perfect run behind a defender. The three million quid a week spent on his wages would probably have been better spent paying six foreign players half a million quid each. You’d still pretty much get your pick of the Premier League for that sort of money, particularly as it’s tax-free.

Anyway, Al-Nassr added a second early on in the second half and then two more in stoppage time. Four-nil flattered them to a certain extent, but they deserved their victory.