Much to the dismay of football fans around the world, there are confirmations of a friendly match set to be scheduled later this month between Paris Saint-Germain and Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr, who recently signed Cristiano Ronaldo in a lucrative deal worth over €500,000,000.00 until June 2025.
According to RMC sport, a French daily, the Saudi-owned clubs both planned to stage a match when PSG went on tour last year but due to Covid concerns, the plans didn’t go ahead as intended.
The club have now rescheduled the tour for this month, which was a contractual obligation on the Parisiens’ part, and could see the French leaders go up against a combined XI of Al Nassr and Al Hilal, and this could well be the final meeting between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Messi, 35, and his 37-year-old peer Ronaldo were most often rivals during the intense rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid, with the Argentine representing Barcelona until he joined PSG on a free transfer in 2021.
Ronaldo has made his own high-profile free transfer switch after having his contract cancelled by Manchester United due to a controversial interview he gave in the run-up to the Qatar World Cup. For club, and then for country against Switzerland in the knockout stages, Ronaldo lost his starting place but is expected to be Al Nassr’s star player after singing a multi-year deal which should net him hundreds of millions of pounds.
The exact date of the friendly is yet to be confirmed but should be finalised in the coming weeks. PSG play two domestic cup games and another Ligue 1 fixture before their mid-month break starts.
Al-Nassr is expected to feature a number of ex-Ligue 1 players including David Ospina (Nice), Álvaro González (Marseille), Luiz Gustavo (Marseille), Ghislain Konan (Reims) and Vincent Aboubakar (Lorient).
