Al Nassr lost to Gamba Osaka in the AFC Champions League Two final on Saturday, and Cristiano Ronaldo watched another trophy slip away as the club failed to claim continental silverware.
The defeat increases Ronaldo’s count of final losses to 15 across his professional career from 2002 to 2026, a running total that now sits alongside the long list of trophies he has won. Ronaldo has not won an official title with Al Nassr since arriving at the club at the beginning of 2023, and the AFC final added to a run that has seen him lose all four finals he has played with the Saudi side in three and a half years.
Those four Al Nassr finals included two Saudi Super Cup defeats — one against Al Hilal and one against Al Ahli — and a King’s Cup outcome against Al Hilal that was decided on penalties after a tie. The club’s one earlier cup success with Ronaldo came in a 2-1 victory in his first final for Al Nassr, when he scored both goals to claim the Arab Club Champions Cup.
Numbers give the loss its weight. One accounting of Ronaldo’s record lists 15 final defeats; another source compiles his career finals as 41 matches with 20 wins, 11 draws and 10 losses. The discrepancy underscores how different competitions and definitions of a “final” change the ledger, even as the simple fact remains: Saturday’s result kept Al Nassr from adding the AFC Champions League Two crown.
The match also re-opened the long-running Messi–Ronaldo frame. Lionel Messi has lost 13 finals since 2004 and, by the counts cited in reporting, owns 48 trophies compared with Ronaldo’s 35. Messi’s most recent final defeat came in 2023 when Inter Miami fell to Houston Dynamo in the US Open Cup. Head-to-head in finals, one source says the pair have met in seven finals with three wins apiece and a drawn two-leg series separating them.
Context matters here. The Al Nassr defeat arrived while the club still had a chance to win both the Saudi Pro League and the AFC Champions League Two titles this season, so the loss does not close the book on the campaign. Still, it sharpens a narrative around Ronaldo’s time in Saudi Arabia: four finals played with the club, and no official continental title to show for them, even as he remains one of the sport’s most prolific scorers and a global draw.
The tension in the story is not only the headline tally of losses. It is the mismatch between Ronaldo’s individual impact in matches and the team outcomes in decisive games. He opened his Al Nassr account for silverware with a 2-1 cup win in which he scored both goals, yet subsequent finals — a 1-4 Saudi Super Cup loss, a 2-2 Saudi Super Cup tie resolved on penalties, and the King’s Cup penalty exit — have produced a run of near-misses instead of closure. Different tallies of his career finals only deepen the question: how should his Al Nassr years be judged?
For Ronaldo and Al Nassr the pressure is now concrete. The most consequential unanswered question is immediate: can the team convert its remaining league run into the Saudi Pro League title and alter how this period is remembered? A domestic crown would reshape the narrative around his stint in Saudi Arabia; another empty run of finals will settle perceptions that, despite moments of brilliance, the Al Nassr chapter is one of unfulfilled finals.
