The Saudi Al-Nassr coach is committed to Ronaldo and blames fatigue

Al-Nassr suffered a new disappointment under the leadership of its Portuguese star, Cristiano Ronaldo, after being eliminated from the Saudi Cup football competition, but its coach, Jorge Jesus, hinted that his compatriot cannot be replaced, blaming the loss to Al-Ittihad on Tuesday on fatigue.

After wasting the opportunity to win the Saudi Super Cup title at the beginning of the season against Al-Ahly, Al-Nasr bid farewell to the second competition it competed in this season by falling to Al-Ittihad 1-2 in the final, so Ronaldo’s disappointments continued by winning an official local title with the club he moved to at the beginning of the year 2023.

The 40-year-old, who has been glowing since the beginning of the season by scoring 12 goals, left the Awal Park Stadium disappointed, facing his former teammate at Real Madrid, the Spanish and French Karim Benzema, who re-published a picture of him on Instagram celebrating scoring a goal in front of Ronaldo’s imagination.

But Jesus hinted in the post-match press conference that his country’s captain would not be replaced, after being asked about the possibility of making such a decision, similar to what his compatriot Sergio Conceicao does with Benzema.

“The union with Sergio was a winner and his strategy was different,” Jesus said. He wanted to bring in a faster striker. Benzema had a few minutes left to finish the match. This is a decision that concerns the Al-Ittihad coach only.”

He continued, “As for Ronaldo, the matter is completely different. We were losing and we needed strikers to play against a five-man defense. “So it made no sense at all in terms of the course of the match to replace Ronaldo.”

But this option was not on the table for Jesus even in previous matches, as he relied on Ronaldo in most of his confrontations until the final minutes.

As for his country’s national team, Ronaldo appeared in three of the four matches he played in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, noting that he scored five goals in them.

Jesus attributed the loss to fatigue after returning from India with a victory over Goa in the AFC Champions League 2.

He said, “I felt that the team today (Tuesday) was a little heavy, tired. The third match was especially important for Joao Felix. He came from India sick and was very tired. Today he was not the same player, and in the last match the week before, he was not at his level either.”