PSG Vs Al Nassr game on 19 January, 2023 saw the Messi vs Ronaldo long time rivalry continued as the duo faced off in Saudi Arabia.
Lionel Messi faced up with long time rival Cristiano Ronaldo in a friendly match between Al Nassr and PSG at the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The match was action-packed and a 9 goals encounter which PSG did win 5-4 after the final whistle.
Lionel Messi has been playing with PSG since the 2021-2022 season, while Cristiano Ronaldo just moved to the Saudi Arabian side Al Nassr from Manchester United in the summer of 2022.
The match which was played on a Thursday was the first match between the two archrivals since 2020 and the 37th time both players have met in their career.
While it was an awesome game to watch, fans feel it might have been the last time football world will see them play against each other again.
The pair were the first to score in the match, with Messi finding the back of the net just after 3 minutes and Ronaldo scoring from a penalty spot.
Juan Bernat of PSG received a red card in the 38th minute before Marquinhos restored the lead again in the 44th minute.
The action continued in the second half of the encounter as Sergio Ramos – a former teammate of Ronaldo scored to give PSG a 3-2 lead in the 53rd minute.
The lead was short-lived for PSG as Jang Hyun-Soo leveled the score three minutes later.
Kylian Mbappe, the Paris sensation, put PSG ahead again with a goal off a penalty kick at the 60th minute.
It was not long after Kylian Mbappe’s goal that the duo, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were substituted from the match.
It was recorded that there was 1.5m ticket requests for the PSG vs Al Nassr game within just 2 hours.
And half of these numbers dropped immediately Ronaldo and Messi were subbed off the pitch.
Hugo Ekitike added PSG’s lead in the 78th Minute to make the score 5-3. Al Nassr never gave up as Anderson Talisca gave his side a fourth goal late in the game but it was not enough to overturn the result.
The duo – Ronaldo and Messi have now scored 23 goals each when they faced each other though Messi leads with 17 wins in the meeting and Ronaldo only won 11.
This match was touted as the final meeting of Messi and Ronaldo on the same field and it did deliver the expected drama.
Ronaldo completed a memorable debut against his old adversary, with two goals, and looked set to have a prolific career ahead with Al Nassr.
How Many People Watched The PSG v Al Nassr Game?
PSG’s friendly match against Riyadh all-star team was streamed on multiple channels and attracted a massive number of over 1.9M Peak Viewers.
However, it was also noted that YouTube was the most popular platform for the coverage of the match and it generates more than 95% of the match’s total hours watched.
PSG’s official English-language YouTube channel was reportedly the most popular, it garnered just under 1.4M Peak Viewers while the Twitch channel of the football club closed the top 5 with a result of 43.7K Peak Viewers.
The broadcast of the match on Twitch was only available for their active subscribers.
Interestingly, when both Ronaldo and Messi were substituted, the number of online viewers dropped by half which goes to show their star-power.
