Cristiano Ronaldo was on target as Al Nassr survived a scare in\u00a0the Asian Champions League\u00a0on Monday with the Saudi Pro League side coming from a goal down to hand Tajikistan\u2019s Istiklol a 3-1 defeat in Riyadh.<\/p>\n
Senin Sebai scored on the break to put the club from Dushanbe in front with a minute left in the first half and Istiklol held out under relentless pressure until Ronaldo levelled with a clever clipped finish in the 66th minute.<\/p>\n
Anderson Talisca headed the Saudi outfit in front six minutes later and the Brazilian put the result beyond doubt with 13 minutes remaining when he stroked a low shot into the corner.<\/p>\n
The victory was Al Nassr\u2019s second in a row in the group stage of the competition and moves Luis Castro\u2019s side three points clear at the top of Group E.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Persepolis are in second place following a 1-0 win over Al Duhail of Qatar, with Omid Alishah scoring in the 63rd minute to earn the 2018 and 2020 runners-up their first victory of the campaign.<\/p>\n
Al-Ittihad\u2019s meeting with Iran\u2019s Sepahan in Group C\u00a0was called off\u00a0as players from the Saudi club refused to leave their dressing room due to a statue of assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani being placed at the entrance to the pitch.<\/p>\n
The Asian Football Confederation said the game, which was due to be played in Isfahan\u2019s Naghsh-e Jahan Stadium, had been \u201ccanceled due to unanticipated and unforeseen circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also in Group C, Air Force Club beat AGMK 2-1 after Ali Jasim scored his third goal in two Asian Champions League games to give the Iraqis a second-minute lead over the Uzbekistan team with Sanzhar Tursunov\u2019s own goal doubling the visitors\u2019 lead.<\/p>\n
Siavash Haghnazari pulled one back for AGMK with nine minutes to go but Air Force Club held on to win and reach four points, one ahead of Al Ittihad.<\/p>\n
In Group B, Uzbekistan\u2019s Nasaf climbed into pole position after claiming their second win in a row when Azizbek Amonov struck twice in a 3-1 win over Al Sadd of Qatar.<\/p>\n
Ruzikul Berdiev\u2019s team holds a two point lead over Sharjah from the United Arab Emirates, who beat Jordan\u2019s Al-Faisaly thanks to a 20th minute goal from Moussa Marega, an Asian Champions League winner with Saudi Arabia\u2019s Al Hilal in 2021.<\/p>\n
The 10 group winners advance to the last 16 along with the three second-placed teams with the best records in the western and eastern halves of the competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cristiano Ronaldo was on target as Al Nassr survived a scare in\u00a0the Asian Champions League\u00a0on Monday with the Saudi Pro League side coming from a goal down to hand Tajikistan\u2019s Istiklol a 3-1 defeat in Riyadh. Senin Sebai scored on the break to put the club from Dushanbe in front with a minute left in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1452,"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions\/1452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.cnbcnews24.live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}