Football fans were denied a Cristiano Ronaldo-Lionel Messi reunion but there was no shortage of entertainment as Al-Nassr hit Inter Miami for six in Riyadh.
An injury to Ronaldo rendered him unavailable for the game but he cheered his teammates on from inside the Kingdom Stadium, enjoying a rather more enjoyable night than his old foe.
Messi came off the bench in the closing stages of the final fixture of the Saudi Arabia leg of Inter’s pre-season schedule but the damage had already been done by that point, with an Anderson Talisca hat-trick plus goals from Mohammed Maran, Otavio, and a 70-yard strike from Aymeric Laporte condemning the Florida-based side to a 6-0 defeat.
The bizarre pre-match handshakes
As seems to be customary with sporting events in Saudi Arabia, there was a ‘celebrity’ presence at the match, with viral video star and Ronaldo super-fan iShowSpeed in attendance.
For some reason, Speed was involved in the pre-match handshakes, following Al-Nassr’s players and greeting football royalty in Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba.
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Shaking hands with Suarez, Speed appears to address him as ‘Sewers’, before greeting Busquets along the line and addressing the World Cup winner as ‘Sergio Biscuits’.
🇺🇸🤝 Speed meets the Inter Miami team which includes Suárez, Alba & Busquets…« Wassup Sergio Biscuits! » 🍪😂🥴 pic.twitter.com/72W4erIWgv
— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom) February 1, 2024
Needless to say, the interactions split opinion, with plenty finding it funny but others questioning why he was there in the first place.
One thing that does seem to be for certain, though, is that we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of him at football matches going forward, so we had all better get used to it!