In the first match of the second leg of the AFC Champions League semifinals that ended in the early morning of April 24, Beijing time, the favorite Riyadh Crescent defeated the UAE's Al Ain 2-1 at home. However, they were still eliminated from the tournament with an aggregate score of 4-5 over two legs. Since then, the four giants of the Saudi Arabian League have all been eliminated in this season's AFC Champions League.
In this AFC Champions League, there are a total of 4 teams participating in the Saudi League, namely Riyadh Crescent, Riyadh Victory, Jeddah United and Faha. Because of the addition of superstars such as Neymar, Mitrovic, Ronaldo, and Benzema, the three Saudi United teams of Riyadh Crescent, Riyadh Victory, and Jeddah United, are among the top 3 in the AFC Champions League this season and are leading the fault. Before the top 8, the Riyadh duo also won the top two in terms of odds to win the championship.
However, despite making it out of the group, Al-Faha lost to Riyadh Victory in the round of 16, Jeddah United lost to Riyadh Crescent in the round of eight, and Riyadh Victory and Riyadh Crescent were eliminated by Al Ain (UAE Super League) in the round of eight and quarter-finals respectively. Since then, Saudi Arabia United, which is optimistic about winning the AFC Champions League this season, has won the "dream broken".
Previously, Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo had said in an interview that the current Saudi league has the level of becoming the sixth league in the world, even better than Ligue 1, one of the five major European leagues. However, after the AFC Champions League "team annihilation", Ronaldo's original rhetoric now seems undoubtedly a kind of irony.
Indeed, the performance of several giants in the Saudi league this season is even worse than Guangzhou Evergrande, which also spent a lot of money and won the AFC Champions League twice that year. Therefore, the Saudi league is obviously still a long way from being a world-class league.