Ronaldo waves Saudi-flag scarf after missile alert delays Al-Nassr match

According to Euronews, Saudi Civil Defence issued the warning about 15 minutes before the scheduled start. Players waited in the dressing rooms while spectators remained seated. The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthis said it intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired toward the capital, and Civil Defence later said the danger had passed.

The match then went ahead at Al-Awwal Park. Ronaldo scored in the 42nd minute, taking his career tally to 981. Angelo Gabriel also scored, and Neftchi later conceded an own goal after briefly getting back into the game through Alisher Odilov. A sending-off for the Uzbek side helped close it out.

The football details are clear enough, but they sit awkwardly beside the reason kick-off was delayed. A pre-match warning is not the sort of interruption sport knows how to absorb neatly. The images afterward — Ronaldo with the scarf, Ronaldo kissing the Saudi emblem on his shirt before the game — were bound to travel faster than the duller sequence that came first: alert, waiting, official clearance.

Euronews also reported that Saudi authorities said attacks on King Khalid International Airport over the weekend killed 14 people and injured more than 300, while the airport remains closed. Separately, Saudi officials speaking anonymously to the Associated Press said an investigation was examining how missiles and drones breached the kingdom’s air defences.

Al-Nassr later shared a quote from Ronaldo’s June 2025 interview with the club on its Arabic X account: “I’m Portuguese, but I belong to Saudi Arabia.”