Topic: Saudi Professional League 2023/2024 - page 58. (Read 111498 times)

For Al Nassr fans, especially Ronaldo fans, the poor results in the pre-season tour were very disappointing, and of course will make them worry about Al Nassr chances of winning the Saudi Pro League trophy next season. We know that Al Nassr will find it difficult to compete with the defending champion Al Hilal, the pre-season tour should have been used as a momentum to improve quality and confidence. The defeat statistics indicate that Al Nassr is not fully ready to start their campaign next season, the management must use the transfer window to add depth to the squad, if they are really ambitious to lead the standings at the end of the season.

On the other hand, In the next few days Al Nassr will face Al Taawon in the semifinals of the Saudi Super Cup, I think Luis Castro must field his best squad so as not to suffer another defeat. I predict Ronaldo will be played in the match, the poor results obtained in the pre-season tour may be influenced by Ronaldo absence. If Al Nassr manages to beat Al Taawon, Ronaldo and his colleagues will most likely face Al Hilal in the final. Overall Al Hilal is favored to win the Saudi Super Cup, Al Nassr must be able to create a turning point in performance to be able to win the trophy.

Al Nassr performance should be something to worry about in the pre-season? I don't think so because they're elite club and capable of accomplishing their priorities for next season. Moreover the pre-season is just a test and warmup for the second XI and opportunities orientation for the bench players. This is the moment for the coach to simply instructs the very best performance and his best XI lineup.

In my opinion, the Saudi Pro League team will never be able to play in the European Champions League, because the Saudi Pro League is included in the Asian Champions League region, and there are many regulations that hinder the realization of this hope. Al Hilal, Al Nassr and all other Saudi Pro League contestants should focus on dominating the Asian Champions League, where last season none of them managed to penetrate the final. Meanwhile, regarding the results of the friendly matches between Al Hilal and Al Nassr, the results recorded by both teams cannot be used as a full reference, because it could be that in the official season their performance will be different. The fight for the trophy next season seems to still be led by Al Hilal, so far they have not shown any signs of decline. We realize that Al Hilal will find it difficult to repeat their unbeaten record throughout the season, especially since Al Nassr as their closest competitor is also ambitious to win the trophy while Ronaldo is still with them.

Currently, only Al Hillal is still performing perfectly in their friendly matches by achieving victory over weak European teams, whereas on the contrary we see that Al Nassr, who was Al Hillal main competitor last season, has not been able to beat the current European teams, so you can imagine what would happen if an Arab team met a European team in an official match like as previously discussed by the Arab League authorities who asked UEFA to allow the SPL championship team to play in the Champions League, from several friendly matches played by Al Nassr, I saw that many teams their opponents did not use their full strength in the match, so I think perhaps the Arab League teams are still not worthy of being compared to European teams, even the weakest teams in Europe at the moment.
Next season the Arab League will have the feel of tight competition after many big teams continue to strengthen their squads and in these conditions it will certainly make it difficult for Al Nassr to compete with other teams for competete to get trophies .

In terms of results, it was indeed a bad result, only winning 1 out of 8 matches they played. But again, this is a pre-season that we cannot conclude just by looking at the pre-season matches, everything might be very different when in the real season. Al Nassr might still be looking for the right formula for them to apply in the competition and that has an impact on their pre-season match results. But that is not something that can be used as a benchmark. We have to look deeper if we want to see what their strengths are like and we can see that when they are in the competition. Moreover, some of the teams that beat them are also good teams in Europe and we know that the quality of some teams in the Saudi Pro League is not comparable to European teams, especially when they did not play with the best strategy and squad in the pre-season. I do not mean to underestimate the team that comes from here, because as a team they also have quality.

Friendly matches are for trials and errors so losses if happen, can be explained. Honestly I did not follow up their recent friendly matches and did not know that what players they used in those matches.

Generally 4 defeats in 8 friendly matches is bad result and even they used friendly matches to find their weakness, to fix before a new season. Losing so many matches like this is not actually good preparation for actual matches in a new season.

If they bring weakness from friendly matches to a new season, won't fix it successfully, they will face with nightmare in early of season like they experienced past season. The poor beginning last season costs the a league title to Al Hilal and they could not equalize difference with Al Hilal after having very long good streak for some months.

Correcting the information, Al-Nassr had 8 friendly matches, and from these 8 matches Al-Nassr got 4 defeats, 3 draws and 1 win. They only won when they faced Maritimo (a team from the Portuguese league), the rest of the results they got were not good. From these results, it looks like they're not ready to face teams from Europe, they're only great domestically, but when they go against European teams they can't do more. The important point is the final sentence you said, this is just a pre-season match, it can't be used as a real reference.

In this match, Inter Milan did not play as well as in other pre-season matches. It's just that this happened because of the player rotation that was carried out in the match. And regarding Benzema, I also agree that he is no longer playing as well as he did when he was at Real Madrid. At Al-ittihad he also often failed to take advantage of good opportunities. And that's been happening since last season when he joined here. It's just that this is also related to Benzema's condition, who has actually been injured too often. In fact, the reason Benzema rarely played last season was because the player's condition had not completely recovered. And this is also what sparked Benzema's dispute with his previous coach. But I'm sure Benzema will try to return his performance to a better form. Maybe he won't be able to play as well as before but he can definitely be better than yesterday.

With this, the pre-season matches for Al-Nassr have ended and in their last match against the Spanish team Almeria they suffered a crushing defeat with 3 goals without reply. It was a very dismal result, especially against a second-tier Spanish team and until now Al-Nassr has never won against a Spanish team. Previously they also lost by a narrow score against Granada and coach Luis Castro was quite unlucky in giving direction to his players.

From the seven matches that have taken place during the pre-season Al-Nassr only won once with two draws and four losses and in my opinion that is not a result that cannot be proud of. It feels like Al-Nassr also did not face strong opponents and with the current squad they should have given different results. But indeed this is only a pre-season match and we cannot expect more.

Pre-season matches are an opportunity for coaches to maximize strategy and see weaknesses that may exist in the team so that they can be improve, just like what we saw in the Al Ittihad and Intermilan matches in the past, if the match is an official match of course there is little chance that Al Ittihad will were able to beat last season Serie A champions, although actually the victory over Intermilan was quite encouraging, but I think Al Ittihad should not be careless in assuming that their team is ready enough to face the tough competition in the SPL next season, because after all there are still many lines and aspects that they have to improve now to support their performance to be better next season to be ready to compete with Al Nassr , Al ahli and Al Hillal.

These preseasons game are usually having nothing with the team's performance because we have them for the purpose of fun and fund-raising for the different charities and related things as mentioned most of the top players were missing for the Inter Milan so they were not able to hold things Al Ittihad which is looking for having better performance and consistency after poor last season take advantage of this weakness and play their best game.

This is going to be good for them, and surely it's also going to increase their confidence because win like this even it is in preseason game now they are feeling good and their preparation for the next season is also looking perfect.

We are going to have another tough season ahead because Al Hilal is looking solid as they were in last season and Al Nassr and Al Ahli are also doing good changes for having better results.

OMG what a shame I missed this match, I didn't expect Inter Milan to be defeated by Saudi Arabian club Al Ittihad, as a top European club at least their performance should be better even though this is just a friendly match, especially since the Saudi League is not that competitive compared to the European League. Even though so far in friendly matches Inter Milan have not experienced defeat because I still think their performance is still quite strong but this time they have to swallow that bitter pill.

Mousa Diaby can at least be the club's mainstay when needed, what surprised me was Karim Benzema who played full time but he couldn't create any chances or provide assists in the match, I didn't see Karim Benzema like when he was at Real Madrid he played there but I didn't recognize him

I personally am not too surprised by this result, because this is a pre-season match. Maybe in this match Inter weren't too serious and were just trying a new strategy, which is why Al Ittihad was able to beat Inter. But even so, Al Ittihad will definitely be very proud of the results they achieved this time. The reason is that being able to beat the strongest team in Serie A is certainly something extraordinary. Apart from that, in this match I was very impressed with Al Ittihad's new player, Mousa Diaby, who was able to score two goals in that match. So with the performance shown by Mousa Diaby in this match, I think Al Ittihad really bought the right player for their wing line. Apart from that, another new player owned by Al Ittihad (Housseum Auoar) also showed quite a good performance in this match. The proof is that he was able to provide one assist for Al Ittihad in this match. Maybe with this, next season Al Ittihad will most likely be able to compete better in the Saudi Arabian League. Apart from that, this match against Inter was the last pre-season match played by Al Ittihad. So after this Al Ittihad only needs to focus on preparing its squad for next season's competition which will start soon.

I would definitely consider that as something to be proud of, even though it's a friendly game, it's still against a team much much better than them, so it's clear that we are talking about a win that's worth something and it should be something they could be very proud of, without this win it feels like we are talking about something that's normal because Inter is better and if Inter won then we would all be saying how common and expected that result is.

However, with Ittihad winning this, and once again I agree that it's just a friendly game, but even with that idea it's still a huge win for them, they are normally not at the same level at all. I would put Ittihad at Serie B right now, because at Serie A right now they would basically battle relegation at the best, and that's with all the money they are spending, teams they would be battling spends %10 of what they spend, and Ittihad still manage to somehow win over the champions so they should be quite happy with this game.

The victory over Intermilan certainly surprised us because in previously match Al Ittihad experienced defeats against La Liga teams, namely Real Betis and Sevilla, which tended to be weaker, both teams actually played quite well in that match and were often able to make the defenders have hard to work to break every attack carried out by both teams, Intermilan succeeded in dominating the match and attack, however they were not able to maximize every opportunity they had to score a goal and this can be seen if Intermilan had 14 shots compared to Al Ittihad which only had 8 shot, Al Ittihad, which had minimal opportunities, was actually able to do more effective in taking advantage of existing opportunities, especially as the intermilan defense was very chaotic in that the match.
Intermilan actually did not field a full squad in that match, but at least the victory over Intermilan gave them greater confidence and motivation to face the competition next season in the SPL.

After having foreign players in this league now things are completely change, and we are having good development in many clubs specially clubs those are having enough sources for investment and having quality players like Al Hilal, Al Nassr, Al Ittihad and Al Ahli these all are under management of the PIF, so things are completely well under control just because of this we are having these clubs at the top spots without any challenge in last season, but now we can expect some changes.

In coming season we are having all clubs were established for having good performance with now we are also having another new club Al Qadsyah its under the management of the Aramco which is world's largest company, and they are also capable of having services of many top players this club can create challenging performance for the few top clubs with their own quality and performance.

I had the opportunity to watch the highlights of the game and Inter wasted some good goal opportunities, it didn't even look like the Inter they were playing, the Inter striker made a lot of mistakes. But it wasn't just the Inter striker who was making mistakes, I saw Benzema also being a disaster, it didn't even seem like Benzema who didn't make mistakes at Real Madrid, he just had to be close to the opposing team's goalkeeper and he would score a goal, there were many games in which Benzema saved Real Madrid. But in this Al-Ittihad team, Benzema is very absent, the mistakes he has made are unbelievable, see some of the mistakes he made in this game



 



 

Inter's defense made a lot of mistakes, probably because Benjamin Pavard wasn't playing, while Inter's attack was missing Lautaro Martínez. If these two players were in the squad and Inter played seriously, I think Inter could have won the game. Al-Ittihad will need to play well this season if they are serious about winning the Saudi Professional League and I honestly see this as an extremely difficult task, especially with Benzema's lack of form. I can see Al-Ittihad finishing in third place next season.

IMO, it seems like Al-Ahli needs a reshuffle in their squad. I mean if they want to compete closely with other strong teams like Al Hilal and Al Nassr, this team must be much more productive in order to compete closely with the other two elite clubs. if we compare, the team architected by Matthias Jaissle has a fairly large gap when compared to the teams occupying the runner-up and first positions. Al-Ahli is 17 pawns away from Al Nassr, 31 points from Al Hilal. but at least, they were able to break into the third position in the LPS rankings. quite good for a promotion team, although they also brought in big names from Europe. talking about the Al Qadsiah squad, this team also has abundant finances. because, this club is under the auspices of one of the state-owned oil companies. that's why, they had no trouble bringing in Nacho Fernandez and Aubameyang. there are also several other players that they brought in, even though they don't have big names. let's see, whether they are able to overtake and break into the top four in the Saudi Pro League table. but, I think they still need some other newcomers who can be relied on. at least, to be able to compete with the top teams in the Saudi League, Al Qadsiah at least needs a depth of players that is not much different from its rivals.

Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the best strikers of all time yet he rejoined his old club Manchester United after leaving Real Madrid. Even when he was released from there, it was very difficult to find his club as no club wanted to sign him at that time. Maybe he had to face such problems mainly due to his out of form.

While Catalan, European, English Premier League, Bundesliga Premier League, Italian Premier League clubs were turning their backs on him, Saudi Pro League club Al Nasser took notice of him He was even signed by the owner of that club to play for that club. There he may spend the last time of his career. Because he is already too old and can't even play like before, so there is no possibility of him being bought by any club later. Moreover, it is a credit to the Saudi Pro League that they were the first to sign a world-class striker of such reputation as Ronaldo. Before this, there was no best player like him in this league.

Previously I thought that Ronaldo would retire at the club where he played, Sporting. But now I feel that he will end his career in the Saudi Pro League, precisely at Al Nassr. Yes you are right, when Ronaldo was having trouble finding a club after being kicked out of Manchester United, Al Nassr came and gave him a contract with a good value too. Not only that, Ronaldo himself can prove that he is still worthy even though he has not been able to provide an achievement for his club, but that is not his fault.

If both agree to a new contract then he will play longer, but we do not know when Ronaldo will decide to retire and he could wait until the 2026 World Cup. I think Ronaldo still has the ambition to bring Al Nassr to become champions in the Saudi Pro League, and with his ambition still as big as that, then maybe he will extend his contract at least until 2026.