Despite N’Golo Kanté and Karim Benzema as star players, Al-Ittihad sank against Al-Nassr, carried by doubles from Cristiano Ronaldo and Sadio Mané, Tuesday evening (5-2). The reigning champions are completely dumped in the Saudi Pro League!
The reunion between Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema on Tuesday evening turned into humiliation for Al-Ittihad, who lost 5-2 at home to Al-Nassr. The formation of “KB9” and N’Golo Kanté, reigning champion, continues its bad season: with an eighth defeat in 18 days, the Jeddah club is sixth in the standings, 22 points behind the leader, Al-Hilal, at 15 of Al-Nassr but also nine from the third and last qualifier for the next Asian Champions League.
Al-Ittihad, however, opened the scoring in front of their home crowd, through Abderrazak Hamdallah (14th), and the Moroccan striker also equalized on the hour mark (52nd). But after a gross foul from Karim Benzema in his area for Ronaldo’s first goal (19th), Fabinho stupidly made a mistake to get himself excluded (67th) and offer a second penalty to the five-time Ballon d’Or winner (68th).
Sadio Mané scored a double (76th and 82nd) at the end of the match to break the team led by Marcelo Gallardo.
