Frenchman Karim Benzema led Al-Ittihad to a convincing 4-1 victory over Al-Shabab, securing a spot in the semifinals of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Cup after a strong offensive performance at Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal Stadium in Jeddah.<\/p>\n
Al-Ittihad began their match under the leadership of Portuguese coach Sergio Concei\u00e7\u00e3o with a lineup including Rajkovic, Fabinho, Hassan Kadash, Danilo Pereira, Muhannad Al-Shanqeeti, N\u2019Golo Kant\u00e9, Mamadou Doumbia, Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, Roger Fernandes, Karim Benzema, and Steven Bergwijn, aiming for an early decision.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab opened the scoring through Moroccan Abdelrazak Hamdallah in the 14th minute following a pass from Hammam Al-Hamami, but Al-Ittihad responded quickly when Mamadou Doumbia equalized in the 20th minute after a successful follow-up on the attack.<\/p>\n
Benzema added Al-Ittihad\u2019s second goal in the 30th minute, capitalizing on a precise pass inside the penalty area to end the first half leading 2-1 amid clear dominance by the Tigers.<\/p>\n
The match referee disallowed an Al-Shabab goal in the 60th minute after video assistant referee (VAR) review revealed an offside on Hammam Al-Hamami, allowing Al-Ittihad to maintain their lead and push forward to strengthen their advantage.<\/p>\n
Benzema shone again six minutes before the end of the match, scoring Al-Ittihad\u2019s third goal following an impressive individual effort, then added a fourth goal just two minutes later, completing a brilliant hat-trick that completely ended Al-Shabab\u2019s hopes.<\/p>\n
With this significant victory, Al-Ittihad joins Al-Hilal, Al-Kholood, and Al-Ahli in the King\u2019s Cup semifinals, having previously eliminated Al-Nassr in the round of 16. Meanwhile, Al-Shabab had reached the quarterfinals after defeating Al-Zulfi by a single goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Frenchman Karim Benzema led Al-Ittihad to a convincing 4-1 victory over Al-Shabab, securing a spot in the semifinals of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Cup after a strong offensive performance at Prince Abdullah Al-Faisal\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batl-tv.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batl-tv.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batl-tv.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batl-tv.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/batl-tv.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batl-tv.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batl-tv.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batl-tv.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}