Referee's decisions support Ronaldo's quest for trophies?

Cristiano Ronaldo was furious as he watched his rivals strengthen, aware that time is running out for him to justify the hundreds of millions he has earned in Saudi Arabia with trophies. But now the anger is also coming from the competition, who believe the Portuguese star has a tailwind — directly from the league authorities. At least that’s what Ivan Toney and his teammates from Al-Ahli Saudi FC claim. The trigger was a 1–1 draw with Al-Fayha FC, which left Al-Ahli in third place in the standings, two points behind Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr FC, who also have a game in hand. More precisely, the controversy stems from refereeing decisions in that match.

Toney and his teammates believe the officials missed at least two penalties that should have been awarded to them. Instead, Toney claims, the referees told Al-Ahli players to “focus on the AFC Champions League.”

“I think the very big talking point was the two penalties, it is as clear as day. I don’t know what more you want him to do, if you pick the ball up with two hands are you going to give a penalty or not? When we tried to talk to the referee, he told us to "focus on the AFC Champions League". How can the referee say this? We are talking about now and he is saying to focus on the AFC. If you want me to go deeper, I can go deeper, it might get me into trouble but I am a man that says it how it is. There are clear talking points with the referee, but his mind is elsewhere” said former Brentford striker in a post match interview. When pressed to say who would benefit from such situation, Toney just laughed:‘We know who, who are we chasing?’ he said, which was a probable reference to Ronaldo.

Toney was so angry with this situation that he continued to comment on referees’ mistakes on his Instagram profile. His colleague Galeno went even further and made a subtle dig at Ronaldo, without even mentioning him.

“Hand over the trophy, that's what they want, they want to knock us out of the championship by any means necessary, they want to hand the trophy to one person, a total lack of respect for our club” he wrote on social media. As for their club Al-Ahli, they seem to agree with their players, as they urged the league to release recordings between the officials and their players during the match and demanded explanations over the refereeing decisions.