{"id":284409,"date":"2026-02-06T19:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T19:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284409\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T19:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T19:33:10","slug":"cristiano-ronaldo-al-nassr-forward-left-out-of-squad-for-second-game-in-a-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284409\/","title":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo: Al-Nassr forward left out of squad for second game in a row"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ronaldo <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/63805297\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">joined Al-Nassr after leaving Manchester United<\/a> in December 2022, becoming the best-paid player in football history with an annual salary of \u00a3177m. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The club, who have won 10 Saudi Pro League titles, called the signing &#8220;history in the making&#8221; but Ronaldo has only won the Arab Club Champions Cup in 2023 since the move. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The five-time Ballon d&#8217;Or winner signed a new two-year contract in June 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Both Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal &#8211; the country&#8217;s most successful club with 19 league titles &#8211; are among the teams controlled by the PIF, which also backs Newcastle United.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">BBC Sport has been told former Real Madrid team-mate Karim Benzema&#8217;s move to league leaders Al-Hilal from Al\u2011Ittihad earlier this week was the principle reason for Ronaldo&#8217;s frustration at Al-Nassr.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">French striker Benzema, 38, scored a hat-trick on his debut for Al-Hilal in a 6-0 win over Al-Okhdood on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Al-Nassr are third in the league, four points behind leaders Al-Hilal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronaldo joined Al-Nassr after leaving Manchester United in December 2022, becoming the best-paid player in football history with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-284409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}