Cristiano Ronaldo answers with a goal in his return following Portugal dustup

Ball off the post, Cristiano Ronaldo shows up, net ripples. That's all it took for the Portuguese star this Friday, in a match that carried far more intrigue than usual given everything that had happened off the field in recent days.

Al Nassr routed Al Diriyah 3-0, and Ronaldo once again took center stage in his first match since walking out of Portugal's national team camp last week. The forward had been an unused substitute in the 2-1 win over Norway in UEFA Nations League play on September 27, and afterward said that head coach Jorge Jesus had gone back on his word to him. The relationship between the two runs deep: Jesus coached Ronaldo last season at Al Nassr, when the pair won the Saudi league title together.

The Portugal situation split opinion outside the club, but inside Al Nassr there was no question about who deserved backing. Before kickoff, a massive banner reading "greatness is earned" was unveiled alongside Ronaldo's No. 7, and in the seventh minute the entire crowd chanted his name. The Portuguese star didn't take long to respond with goals: in the 23rd minute he opened the scoring after a brilliant individual play from Kingsley Coman, the former Bayern Munich winger, whose shot was saved by goalkeeper Waleed Ali. The rebound fell right to Ronaldo, who tapped the ball into the net with the kind of joy that only comes from goals scored after a rough week.

With that strike, Ronaldo reached 980 career goals, a tally that keeps climbing match after match despite his 41 years.

The rest of the match was a formality for Al Nassr. Samu Costa, another Portuguese international, doubled the lead in the 35th minute, and Coman himself, who had set up the opener, sealed the rout in the 77th.

The win leaves Al Nassr level on points with Al Qadsiah, which remains first on goal difference, though several teams near the top of the table still have games to play this weekend.

After the final whistle, Ronaldo didn't hold back on the celebration, taking it to social media with a photo marking his goal:

Job done. On to the next.Cristiano Ronaldo

Still pending, however, is the other chapter of this story: whether there will be any sanction for leaving the Portugal camp. Ronaldo, who has a record of 146 goals in 234 matches for the Portuguese national team, already stated in a message earlier this week that he will remain available for his country, though it's still unclear how the federation will respond to what happened.