Al-Nassr vs Neftchi: Most Unsafe Elite League Match / Sirens and Explosions: Ronaldo Held for Over an Hour!

Last night, air-raid sirens and a series of loud explosions in Riyadh delayed the Al-Nassr Champions League Elite match by more than an hour. Asia is asking whether Saudi Arabia is truly safe to host a football match?

According to Sport Se, last night, the meeting between Al-Nasr and Naftchi Ferghana in the Asian Elite League turned into one of the strangest matches in the history of the competition.

In the struggle of the Saudi attacks on Yemen and the long-term siege of the people of this country, these days Ansarullah is responding to the aggression of Saudi Arabia with an advance warning, and the insistence of the Saudi authorities to pretend that there is no problem caused last night's game to be held in a strange way.

The match, which was supposed to be held at 21:45 Iran time at the Al-Awal Stadium in Riyadh Park, started with a delay of more than an hour. Exactly at the same time when the refereeing team should have blown the whistle and the game started, the rockets of Yemen's Ansarullah were flying over the sky of Riyadh and the Saudis were firing interceptor missiles. The sound of the alarm was heard in all corners of Riyadh, and warning SMSs were sent to the mobile phones of all Saudi citizens. In such a situation, the officials of the Saudi Federation wanted Ma Ning, the veteran Chinese referee, and the AFC observers to hold the game as scheduled!

After an hour of locking the stars in the dressing room due to the warning of an air attack and the interception of missiles, it was held in the sky of the Saudi capital.

AFC officers who were monitoring everything reminded the Saudi officials that their own civil defense organization had issued an urgent air alert minutes earlier. AFC referee Ma Ning said the game would not start until the alert was cleared. The stars of the two teams were locked in the dressing room, and thousands of spectators on the stands waited in amazement for the assignment of the game. They really didn't know if they should leave the stadium or stay.

It was at this moment that messages were seen on the phones of the residents of Riyadh asking people to keep their cool, go to shelters or safe places immediately and stay away from doors and windows. The fans who were in Al-Awal Park left the stands and the image released from the AFC camera showed that the stadium was almost empty.

Simultaneously with these warnings, the sound of explosions was heard in different parts of Riyadh city. A few minutes later, Saudi Arabia claimed that the air defense had succeeded in intercepting and destroying the ballistic missiles that were fired by Yemeni Ansarullah forces towards Riyadh.

The fans who had reached the covered areas of the stadium were extremely worried. They had heard the sound of Ansarullah's missiles landing and knew that the statement of interception of all missiles cannot be believed. There were even whispers of canceling the match.

The Saudi football authorities did not want the game to be canceled at all. The cancellation of an elite league game was a great disgrace and it could have challenged the continuation of hosting Saudi teams. It was for this reason that the stadium announcer wanted the audience to keep calm by announcing a series of messages and promised that the game would be held.

When Ansarullah's rockets hit their targets and no explosions were heard in the city for a few minutes, the Saudi television broadcast announced the postponement of the match by one hour.

After about an hour of indecisiveness and the determination of Al-Nasr stars and the Uzbek team, two teams finally entered the field and the game finally started.

It was really strange that Naftchi Ferghana agreed to continue playing in such conditions. Of course, the AFC authorities insisted that the Uzbek team return to the field and continue playing, otherwise they may face the penalty of losing 3-0. The Uzbeks did not forget that a few days before this game, the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh was targeted by Ansarullah's retaliatory missile attacks, and according to official statistics, at least 12 to 13 people were killed and more than 300 injured.

The game finally started, but Saudi Arabia, a country that spent years investing heavily in sports in order to convey an image of stability and security to the world, inevitably had its match delayed for more than an hour due to the lack of security in a game where the symbol of its football investments, Cristiano Ronaldo, was present and therefore watched by millions of viewers from all over the world.

Ronaldo's team entered the field and the Chinese referee blew the starting whistle. Angelo Gabriel opened the goal for the representative of Uzbekistan in the 33rd minute and Cristiano scored in the 42nd minute. Goal number 981 of the Portuguese superstar's career, which brought him one step closer to the historic goal of a thousand goals.

In the second half, Naftchi narrowed the gap with Alisher Udilof's goal, but Ekramjan Alibayev's dismissal in the 65th minute due to a foul on Mohammad Simakan ended the work of the Ferghana team. In the 78th minute, Anurjan Ghafurov's own goal ended the game with a 3-1 lead for Nasr.