{"id":890671,"date":"2026-09-13T15:57:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T15:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/890671\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T15:57:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T15:57:45","slug":"cristiano-ronaldo-calls-for-lifetime-bans-in-saudi-pro-league-after-diogo-jota-chants-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/890671\/","title":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo calls for lifetime bans in Saudi Pro League after Diogo Jota chants | Soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cristiano Ronaldo said that fans who appeared to \u2060make chants referencing his former teammate Diogo Jota at R\u00faben Neves during a Saudi \u2060Pro League \u2060match \u200bshould be banned for life from football stadiums.<\/p>\n

The chants occurred on Saturday during \u2060a fixture between Al-Taawoun and Neves\u2019s side, Al-Hilal<\/a>, in Buraydah, Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Jota died last year<\/a> in a car crash in Zamora, \u200bnorth-western Spain, along with \u200chis brother Andr\u00e9 \u200cSilva. A close friend of Jota, Neves was a \u200cpallbearer at his funeral.<\/p>\n

Footage filmed from the stands during the match and circulated on social media appeared to show supporters chanting \u201cJota\u201d. The shouts attracted the attention of Neves, who pointed to his eye and \u200cthen up to the sky in response. Passing through the mixed zone after the game, \u200bNeves said: \u201cI hope they don\u2019t go to pray afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to an Instagram post showing the footage, Ronaldo commented from his personal account. \u201cThe league must take \u2060action and punish this kind of fan behaviour,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis \u200bis no longer football, \u200band there have to be limits. People \u200bwho behave \u200clike this should \u200bnever \u200bbe allowed to enter a stadium again.\u201c<\/p>\n

The game finished 6-0 to Al-Hilal, with Neves playing 75 minutes before being substituted.<\/p>\n

Reuters has contacted Al-Taawoun and Al-Hilal for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo said that fans who appeared to \u2060make chants referencing his former teammate Diogo Jota at R\u00faben…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-890671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890671","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=890671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}