{"id":46362,"date":"2026-04-05T00:04:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T00:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=46362"},"modified":"2026-04-05T00:04:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T00:04:42","slug":"ronaldo-scores-twice-on-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=46362","title":{"rendered":"Ronaldo scores twice on return"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Cristiano Ronaldo marked his return from a month-long injury layoff by scoring twice in the second half as Al \u200cNassr maintained their winning run with a 5-2 victory over bottom side Al Najma in the Saudi Pro League on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The Portuguese forward, sidelined since February, had missed Al Nassr\u2019s previous two \u2060league matches and was also ruled out of Portugal\u2019s friendlies against Mexico and the United States last month.<\/p>\n<p>Al Najma, who have won only once in 27 league games, took a surprise lead a minute before halftime through Rakan Al Tulayhi.<\/p>\n<p>Al Nassr responded swiftly, with Abdullah Al Hamdan and Sadio Mane scoring \u200cin \u2060first-half stoppage time to turn the match around.<\/p>\n<p>The visitors drew level two minutes after the restart when Felippe Cardoso struck, but Al Nassr regained control when Ronaldo \u2060converted a penalty in the 56th minute.<\/p>\n<p>The 41-year-old added his second in the 73rd minute before Mane sealed the \u2060win with a stoppage-time strike.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier on Friday, Al-Ittihad claimed a 1-0 win at home against Al-Hazem despite having Moussa Diaby sent off after 34 minutes. Having been denied a penalty by VAR in the 66th minute, the reigning SPL champions took the lead six minutes later through Abdulrahman Al-Obud. Al-Ittihad now sit sixth in the table with 45 points from 27 matches. Al-Hazem are in 10th place with 31 points from the same number of matches.<\/p>\n<p>In the day\u2019s other match, Al-Kholood drew 2-2 with Khaleej Club with two first-half goals from Guga (9 minutes) and Abdulaziz Al-Elewai (37), the visitors\u2019 first equalizer coming from a Konstantinos Fortounis penalty spot on 18 minutes. Khaleej grabbed a point thanks to a second leveller from Giorgos Masouras in the 85th minute.<\/p>\n<p>The result leaves Al-Kholood in 14th place and Khaleej in 10th.<\/p>\n<p>Al Nassr\u2019s 13th consecutive league victory kept them top of the standings \u2060on 70 points, six clear of second-placed Al Hilal, who play Al Taawoun on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cristiano Ronaldo marked his return from a month-long injury layoff by scoring twice in the second half as Al \u200cNassr maintained their winning run with a 5-2 victory over bottom side Al Najma in the Saudi Pro League on Friday. The Portuguese forward, sidelined since February, had missed Al Nassr\u2019s previous two \u2060league matches and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}