Manchester United's wage bill dropped by £5m between October and December 2022 following the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo.
13.03.2023 - 21:19 / manchestereveningnews.co.uk
The King Cup returns after a three-month hiatus this week to offer Cristiano Ronaldo's Al-Nassr a chance to refocus on other competitions after losing their position atop the Saudi Pro League to Al-Ittihad.
While just one point and two goals separate the title contenders with 10 matches of the season remaining, the kingdom's knockout cup competition offers another avenue to silverware this season. It is one of three trophies available at the start of every season, the others being the league title and the Saudi Super Cup.
Former Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers head coach Nuno Espirito Santo led Al-Ittihad to the latter in January after eliminating Al-Nassr in the semi-finals. The winners and runners-up of the league and cup competitions compete in the following season's Super Cup, but how does one win the King Cup in the first place? The Manchester Evening News explains all.
READ MORE: Ronaldo posts cryptic message after Al-Nassr title blow
To give it its official title, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Cup is the kingdom's oldest competition and dates back to 1957. Then, it was the country's only nationwide competition and came to be almost two decades before the first professional league began.
The cup took place every year until 1990, after which it took a 17-year hiatus before being reformatted and rebranded as the King's Cup of Champions. That experiment was short-lived as the original name returned seven years later as the competition reverted to its original form.
Ordinarily, 64 teams from across the top four tiers of Saudi football compete, but that has been reduced to a field of 16 over the previous three editions due to first in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and then the
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