{"id":584643,"date":"2026-04-04T08:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T08:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/584643\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T08:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T08:41:10","slug":"cristiano-ronaldo-scores-twice-in-al-nassr-win-on-return-from-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/584643\/","title":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo scores twice in Al-Nassr win on return from injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice on his return from a month-long injury absence to help Al-Nassr defeat bottom side Al-Najma in the Saudi Pro League.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 41-year-old Portugal forward struck twice in the second half to reach 23 goals in as many league games for his club this season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ronaldo sustained a hamstring injury in late February and travelled to Spain for treatment last month after the issue was found to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cd70j0x0nrzo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">more serious than first thought<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The former Real Madrid and Manchester United star missed two league games and Portugal&#8217;s international friendlies against Mexico and the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Al-Najma took a surprise lead, despite managing to win only once in 27 league games. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But former Liverpool forward Sadio Mane and Abdullah Al Hamdan scored in first-half stoppage time to give Al-Nassr a half-time lead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ronaldo converted a 56th-minute penalty to restore his side&#8217;s lead after the visitors equalised, before he and Mane both scored their second goals to seal victory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A 13th consecutive league win for Al-Nassr extended their lead at the top of the table to six points over second-placed Al-Hilal, who play Al-Taawoun on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice on his return from a month-long injury absence to help Al-Nassr defeat bottom side&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-584643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}