Saudi Pro League title race: Al-Ahli accuse referees of handing Cristiano Ronaldo the trophy

Galeno didn't exactly mention anyone. “Hand over the trophy,” the Al-Ahli winger wrote in Portuguese on X after Wednesday's 1-1 draw against Al-Fayha.

“That's what they want. They want to knock us out of the championship by any means necessary. They want to give the trophy to one person. A total lack of respect for our club.”

The person, in a league where one man above all others carries the weight of the entire commercial project, the message was clear enough without a name attached.

The backdrop is a Saudi Pro League title race that has reached its most interesting point. Al-Nassr, Cristiano Ronaldo's club, lead the table with six games remaining and a game in hand. Al-Ahli sit third, four points back. The draw against mid-table Al-Fayha, a result that stretched the gap and handed Al-Nassr breathing room, came with three penalty appeals from Al-Ahli waved away, two after full VAR reviews.

The referee, according to Al-Ahli striker Ivan Toney, also told him mid-match to “focus on the AFC,” a reference to the Asian Champions League, at the precise moment a VAR check was under way for a handball decision in stoppage time. That detail, if accurate, is extraordinary. A fourth official telling a player in a title race, while a major call is being reviewed, to direct his attention elsewhere.

The England international, in his post-match interview, said the penalties were “clear as day,” that the referee's “mind is elsewhere,” and that the officiating had changed in tone at exactly the wrong moment.

“Throughout the season it was a clear penalty but now we get to the crunch time and they change it,” he added.

When a journalist asked whose benefit these decisions were serving, Toney laughed and replied: “We know who. Who are we chasing?”

Al-Ahli followed with an official club statement expressing “deep dissatisfaction with refereeing errors” and demanding access to the full audio recordings of communications between the referee, VAR and the players during the match. The statement described the decisions as having “a direct impact on the flow of the game and its final outcome” and said the situation “raises legitimate concerns regarding the referee selection process.”

These paint a picture of a club that believes something is institutionally wrong with how the title race is being officiated.

The investigation that followed found nothing. Saudi outlet Al-Arriyadiyah, as revealed by Goal, reported that the Main Referees Committee of the Saudi Football Federation reviewed the full audio recordings from the match and found no evidence to support the specific claims made by Toney and coach Nico Jaissle.

Al-Ahli's formal request for the recordings was reviewed and, according to the committee's assessment, nothing in those communications corroborated the allegations. That verdict has done little to calm the anger, not least because the same week, Al-Hilal midfielder Ruben Neves, a Portugal international and Ronaldo's international teammate, produced a clip on his phone in the mixed zone after a 2-2 draw against Al-Taawoun to allege that a crucial foul had been missed in their match too.

Two of the clubs chasing Al-Nassr, making the same complaint, in the same week.

Toney now faces serious disciplinary consequences. Under Article 5/50 of Saudi Arabian Football Federation regulations, casting doubt on the integrity of refereeing carries a potential suspension of up to 12 months and a fine of up to 300,000 riyals, approximately £65,000.

Saudi legal adviser Salman Al-Ramali reportedly told Okaz that Toney's statements were “detrimental to the Saudi League” and that the case would be formally pursued.

A year-long ban would rule the striker out of the World Cup this summer, a tournament for which England manager Thomas Tuchel had been monitoring him closely given his 27-goal season. The irony of Toney's most productive campaign potentially costing him a World Cup place is not a small thing.

The broader question that nobody in Riyadh wants to address directly is the structural one. Al-Nassr have not won the Saudi Pro League title in the Ronaldo era. The Portuguese star, who arrived in January 2023 and has been the league's most visible asset ever since, is desperately close to his first official piece of silverware at the club.

The Saudi football project, worth billions in Public Investment Fund money and built around the global reach of Ronaldo's name, has a commercial interest in that moment arriving. That does not mean referees are being instructed. It does not mean the accusations are correct. But the fact that two separate clubs have raised the same concern in the same week, and that the framing in both cases pointed toward the same beneficiary, is a story the Saudi Pro League cannot simply investigate away.

It needs to be addressed with transparency, not just a clean report from its own committee.