Cristiano Ronaldo to Miss Al-Nassr Season Start After Wedding
Cristiano Ronaldo will not be on the pitch when Al-Nassr launch their title defence. According to Saudi newspaper Al-Yaum, the Portuguese star is expected to miss the club’s first two competitive games of the 2026-2027 campaign after marrying long-time partner Georgina Rodriguez on Saturday.
Those games are not minor footnotes. Al-Nassr open their Roshn League season against Al-Fateh next Saturday, then face Al-Diriyah three days later in the round of 32 of the King’s Cup. Both matches, the report says, will go ahead without their captain.
The timing adds another layer to a growing story around Ronaldo’s absence.
His last competitive appearance came for Portugal at the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, where their campaign ended on 6 July with a 1-0 defeat to Spain in the round of 16. From there, the expectation was straightforward: the standard 21-day post-World Cup grace period, then a return to club duty.
That return never came.
Ronaldo skipped Al-Nassr’s overseas training camp, which concluded last Wednesday, and stayed away as the squad moved through a demanding pre-season schedule across three cities: Riyadh, Abha and Lisbon. Session after session passed without him. His absence has now stretched to 32 days.
For a player who has built a career on relentless availability and obsessive preparation, the sight of Al-Nassr working without their figurehead has been striking. This is not a veteran quietly easing himself into the background. This is the man who dragged the club to the Saudi League title last season, ending a seven-year domestic drought and reasserting Al-Nassr as a force at the top of the table.
Now the champions must begin their defence without him.
The stakes are high. Al-Nassr are not only chasing back-to-back league crowns; they are also targeting a first-ever AFC Champions League Elite title, a prize that would shift their regional status and validate the scale of their recent investment. Every early-season point, every cup tie, feeds into that larger ambition.
Starting that journey without Ronaldo changes the picture. It shifts responsibility onto the rest of the squad, tests the depth of the attack and offers an early look at how Al-Nassr cope when their talisman is not there to decide the margins.
Ronaldo will return. The question, as the new season kicks off without him, is simple: in a campaign loaded with expectation, how much ground will Al-Nassr have to make up by the time their captain is back in the lineup?
