Jeddah/Private:
The Saudi Football Federation team defeated its New Zealand counterpart, Auckland City, 3-0, in their meeting at King Abdullah Sports City Stadium at the opening of the 20th edition of the Club World Cup, currently being held in Jeddah, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Al-Ittihad player Romarinho opened the scoring in the 29th minute, and N'Golo Kante increased the score with a second goal (34), while French star Karim Benzema scored the third goal (40), becoming the first player in history to score in four different editions of the Club World Cup.
With this result, Al-Ittihad qualified for the quarter-finals to meet Al-Ahly of Egypt on December 15th.
The Saudi Federation is participating in the tournament for the second time in its history, as it participated in 2005 for the first time when the competition was held in Japan. In the 2005 edition, Al-Ittihad defeated the Egyptian Al-Ahly club in its first match in the tournament with a clean goal, then lost in the semi-finals to Sao Paulo of Brazil with a score of “3-2”, before losing again in the bronze medal match to the Costa Rican team Saprissa with the same score.
In the current tournament, Al-Ittihad is participating as champion of the Saudi League, as the tournament regulations stipulate that the league champion of the organizing country will participate, in addition to the continental champions.
Auckland did not achieve any achievement during its previous ten participations other than winning the bronze medal in 2014, where it defeated two Arab teams during its journey at that time and won over Moghreb Tetouan on penalty kicks, then ES Setiq of Algeria by a goal to nil, before defeating Cruz Azul of Mexico in the bronze medal match.
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