Karim Benzema’s Al Ittihad secured progress from the first round of the Club World Cup with a convincing 3-0 win against Auckland City on Tuesday.
Saudi Pro League champions Al Ittihad made short work of New Zealand’s Auckland City, winners of the OFC Champions League
Karim Benzema’s Al Ittihad secured progress from the first round of the Club World Cup with a convincing 3-0 win against Auckland City on Tuesday.
Backed by a full house at home in Jeddah, Saudi Pro League champions Al Ittihad made short work of New Zealand’s Auckland City, winners of the OFC Champions League.
Brazilian Romarinho, N’Golo Kante and Benzema scored in the first half to book their team’s place in the second round, where they will face Al Ahly of Egypt on Friday.
The Saudi side made their dominance pay on 29 minutes when a clearance came invitingly onto Romarinho, whose firm strike glanced off an Auckland defender leaving the ‘keeper stranded.
Al Ittihad doubled its lead five minutes later when Kante thumped a right-footed volley into the back of the net following a weak clearance from a corner.
The tie was effectively over with 40 minutes on the clock when five-time tournament winner Benzema tapped home after slick interplay down the right by Kante and Muhannad Al Shanqeeti.
Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi militants fired on Saudi oil installations in two ports on the Red Sea coast on Saturday, but the United States held back from launching air strikes on Iran itself for the first night in two weeks.
Yemen is edging towards the resumption of a more than decade-old frozen conflict, Yemeni officials, Western diplomats and analysts say, as attacks on Saudi infrastructure and shipping by Iran-aligned Houthis test the patience of the kingdom and the Yemeni government forces it backs.
President Donald Trump said Thursday that a civilian nuclear cooperation deal signed with Saudi Arabia a day earlier is "totally subject" to the kingdom normalizing relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords, adding a significant condition that was not part of the original agreement as announced.
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