The Portuguese team in the series lost on penalties to Sergei Rebrov's former club.
Al-Nasrof superstar forward Cristiano Ronaldofailed to reach the semi-finals of the Asian Champions League, having been eliminated from the tournament by Al Ain from the UAE, the former team of the head coach of the Ukrainian national team Sergei Rebrov.
After a minimal away defeat in the first match (0:1), Al-Nasr lost at home with a score of 0:2 in the second match – the Moroccan Sufyan Rahimi scored a double.
However, then the Saudi club made a comeback, scoring three goals. Before the break, the hosts' gap was reduced by Abdulrahman Gharib, and at the beginning of the second half, visiting goalkeeper Khalid Eisa managed to save Otavio's cross the ball into an own goal.
In the 72nd minute Alex Telles scored the third goal against Al Ain. It’s interesting that before this Ronaldo had a killer chance, but the 39-year-old Portuguese missed the corner of the goal when finishing from a meter away.
رونالدو أمام المرمى #النصر_العين pic.twitter.com/XYcDJ1eEEk
— KHALID ALOLYAN (@OLYAN15K) March 11, 2024</blockquote
The main time of the match ended with the score 3:2, therefore 3:3 on aggregate. The game went into extra time, where Cristiano's team was left in the minority in the 98th minute – midfielder Ayman Yahya earned a straight red card for a flagrant foul.
The Emirati club took advantage of the numerical advantage and scored in the 103rd minute through the efforts of Sultan Al Shamsi.
However, Ronaldo</em gave Al-Nasr hope of salvation by converting a penalty in the 118th minute and sending the match into a series of penalty kicks.
In the penalty shootout, the players from the UAE team turned out to be more accurate, converting all three of their shots from the mark. But out of four attempts by Al-Nasr, only Ronaldo missed, while Marcelo Brozovic, Talles and Otavio failed to score, which cost their team elimination from the tournament.
In the semi-finals of the Asian Champions League, Al-Nasr Ain will face another Saudi team, Karim Benzema's Al Ittihad or Neymar's Al Hilal, who will play the second leg of the quarter-finals on March 12. The first meeting ended with a score of 2:0 in favor of Al-Hilal.
We add that this season Ronaldo played 33 matches for Al-Nasr in all tournaments, scored 29 goals and gave 11 assists .
After 23 rounds of the Saudi Arabian championship, Cristiano's team is in second place in the table, 12 points behind the leader Al-Hilal.
Recall that at the end of February Ronaldo suspendedfor one match for an obscene gesture towards fans in Saudi Arabia.
