RIYADH: A new chapter in the celebrated rivalry between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi will unfurl on Thursday when they meet in an exhibition match as the Portugal forward gears up for his first game in Saudi Arabia since joining Al Nassr.
After a glittering career in Europe that saw him win four Champions League titles with Real Madrid and two Scudettos at Juventus, Ronaldo signed for Al Nassr, describing it as the “right moment” to share his experience in Asia.
The Saudi club is the latest stop in Ronaldo’s career that began in 2002 at Sporting CP before the forward spent two spells at Manchester United, the last of which ended on a bitter note as he exited following his acrimonious split with the club.
Ronaldo and Messi, who have dominated football’s debate about the greatest of all time (GOAT) for the best part of 10 years, will face off on the pitch on Thursday for the first time since December 2020 when Juventus beat Barcelona 3-0.
Ronaldo will lead Riyadh ST XI, a team made up of players from Al Hilal and Al Nassr, against Messi’s Paris St Germain in the exhibition contest where nothing is at stake, but fans are still excited by the prospect of watching the two stars clash.
The highly anticipated showdown, which will take place at the King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh, reportedly had more than two million online ticket requests.
The bidding for a VIP “Beyond Imagination” ticket to the match has already topped 10 million riyals ($2.66 million) in an auction that is set to end later on Tuesday.
The game has also captivated fans as it comes just over a month after Messi helped Argentina win the 2022 World Cup, the missing piece in his vast trophy collection.
Ronaldo also made headlines during the tournament, becoming the first player to score in five World Cups, but he ended up in tears after Portugal were knocked out in the quarter-finals by Morocco.
While Thursday’s friendly will be Ronaldo’s first in Saudi Arabia, the 37-year-old’s first competitive appearance will come in the Saudi Pro League on Sunday when Al Nassr host Al Ettifaq.
Last month, he signed a two and a half year contract with Al Nassr, estimated by media to be worth more than 200 million euros ($216.28 million), but has had to wait to play because of a two-match ban by England’s FA for knocking a phone out of a fan’s hand in April.
SMALL STADIUMS, HIGH TEMPERATURES
But after lighting up football’s biggest stages, Ronaldo faces a very different reality in Saudi Arabia with smaller stadiums and less exalted teams — and some very high temperatures.
The five-time Ballon d’Or winner will soon be running out at modest venues including the 6,000-seat Al Batin Stadium and the 16-team league will take Ronaldo from Dammam on the Gulf coast to Jeddah on the Red Sea, as well as desert-bound provincial cities such as Majma’ah and Hofuf, a hub for Saudi Arabia’s date industry.
While Al Hilal and Al Ittihad, the giants of Saudi football, play in 62,000-capacity home grounds, a handful of Pro League teams have small venues for less than 10,000 fans, and some pitches are surrounded by running tracks.
Ronaldo’s home ground will be Al Nassr’s 25,000-capacity Mrsool Park, which lies on a university campus in Riyadh and was packed for his gala unveiling earlier this month.
Chartered planes will ferry the superstar and his team-mates to away games, club sources said, sparing him long coach trips through the desert landscape.
The Pro League season runs from August to May, avoiding the worst of the fierce summer heat when temperatures routinely top 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
Even the evenings, when many games are played, can remain above 30C (86 Fahrenheit) in August and September, and from March until the end of the season.
Saudi Arabia is a leading force in Asian football with six World Cup appearances, including a famous victory over Messi’s Argentina at the recent edition in Qatar.
Al Hilal and Al Ittihad have won six AFC Champions League titles between them. With Ronaldo, Al Nassr will have hopes of qualifying for this year’s competition and joining their great rivals as Asian champions.
Although the Pro League’s standards cannot match the heights of England, Spain and Italy, where Ronaldo has spent his career so far, it is a competitive division.
The Saudi league was launched in 1976 but in the 14 years since the Pro League became the top tier, there have been six different winners.
Ronaldo’s first task will be to keep Al Nassr on top of the league and secure their first title in four years. But the other teams will be highly motivated to stop him.
