'Five more minutes': Ronaldo asks for more pitch time in Al-Nassr v Benfica match

Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo asked for more time on the pitch as his club Al-Nassr struggled in their match against Benfica on Thursday.

The Saudi side limped to a 4-1 defeat in a club friendly against the Portuguese champions at the neutral Estadio Algarve near Faro.

Ronaldo was due to be subbed 66 minutes in, when Al-Nassr were 3-1 down to the side, who are the bitter rivals of his boyhood club Sporting Lisbon.

But the former Real Madrid striker gestured to new Al-Nassr manager Luis Castro to give him just five more minutes on the pitch to turn things around.

Al-Nassr have played a series of friendly matches in Europe this summer.

Their defeat to Benfica came after a 5-0 hammering a few days earlier by Spanish side Celta Vigo.

The Saudi side will next head to Japan, where they will play France's Ligue 1 giants Paris Saint Germain on 25 July.

Ronaldo was the first big-name European football player to move to a Saudi Pro League team, signing a two-year contract with Al-Nassr in December 2022.

Since then, there has been a push by Saudi clubs to attract world-class players with big-money offers. Saudi Arabia wants its domestic league to be among the top 10 in the world by the end of the decade.

Several other big-name players have since followed Ronaldo to the Gulf kingdom, including Karim Benzema and N’Golo Kante.