{"id":19656,"date":"2026-09-16T14:03:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T09:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/?p=19656"},"modified":"2026-09-16T14:03:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T09:03:57","slug":"al-nassrs-defensive-errors-prove-co","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/2026\/09\/16\/al-nassrs-defensive-errors-prove-co\/","title":{"rendered":"Al-Nassr\u2019s defensive errors prove costly as Al-Ain seal a commanding victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Al-Nassr\u2019s defensive errors prove costly as Al-Ain seal a commanding victory<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Houssine Rahimi strikes twice as Al-Ain dominate Ronaldo-led Al-Nassr<\/p>\n

AL AIN: Saudi Pro League champions Al-Nassr endured a humiliating 4-0 defeat against Al-Ain of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, making a disastrous start to their Asian Champions League Elite campaign.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cristiano Ronaldo and his Al-Nassr<\/a> teammates struggled throughout the contest as Al-Ain produced a dominant display, with Houssine Rahimi scoring twice before Soufiane Rahimi and Giorgos Giakoumakis added further goals.<\/p>\n

Al-Ain opened the scoring in the 25th minute after Houssine Rahimi capitalised on a poorly weighted back-pass from Saad Al-Nasser. Rahimi intercepted the ball and calmly finished through the legs of goalkeeper Nawaf Al-Aqidi.<\/p>\n

The hosts doubled their advantage in the 63rd minute when Rahimi found the net again, side-footing the ball home from around eight yards to put Al-Ain firmly in control.<\/p>\n

Al-Ain continued to threaten and scored their third goal when Soufiane Rahimi timed his run perfectly onto Alejandro Romero\u2019s through ball. Staying onside, he fired a first-time effort into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n

Giakoumakis completed the rout in the 85th minute. Soufiane Rahimi turned provider, rolling the ball into the path of the Greek forward, who finished confidently from around 15 yards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was going to be tough, we had to give it our all and I think we did that,\u201d Giakoumakis said after the match.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were really mature from the first to the last moment and we managed to score a good amount of goals and have a good victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The heavy defeat leaves Al-Nassr with plenty to address as they continue their campaign in the expanded Asian Champions League Elite competition.<\/p>\n

In another league-phase fixture, four-time champions Al-Hilal secured a 2-1 victory over Qatar\u2019s Al-Gharafa in Riyadh.<\/p>\n

The match saw both sides reduced to 10 players after separate incidents involving Crysencio Summerville and Al-Gharafa\u2019s Ismael Bennacer.<\/p>\n

Summerville was sent off in the 32nd minute following an altercation with Abdulrahman Al-Rashidi. Bennacer was subsequently shown a red card after becoming involved in the confrontation that followed.<\/p>\n

Al-Hilal took the lead three minutes into first-half stoppage time when Ruben Neves converted from the penalty spot. The penalty was awarded after Al-Rashidi brought down winger Saimon Bouabre inside the area.<\/p>\n

Al-Hilal doubled their advantage 17 minutes from full time when Sergej Milinkovic-Savic\u2019s header took a deflection and went beyond goalkeeper Ahmed Kone.<\/p>\n

Al-Gharafa managed to pull a goal back deep into stoppage time through Alaa Eddin Hasan, who scored from distance, but Al-Hilal held on to claim all three points.<\/p>\n

The expanded 16-team league phase will see the top eight finishers advance to the knockout rounds in March. The quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are scheduled to be played in Saudi Arabia in April and May.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al-Nassr\u2019s defensive errors prove costly as Al-Ain seal a commanding victory Houssine Rahimi strikes twice as Al-Ain dominate Ronaldo-led Al-Nassr AL AIN: Saudi Pro League champions Al-Nassr endured a humiliating 4-0 defeat against Al-Ain of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, making a disastrous start to their Asian Champions League Elite campaign. Cristiano Ronaldo and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2297,2305],"tags":[3138,3028],"class_list":["post-19656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-sports","tag-al-nassr","tag-cristiano-ronaldo"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19658,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19656\/revisions\/19658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}