Newcastle United rose to the challenge in Riyadh as they took on Asia’s most decorated club in a mid-season friendly at the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Stadium.
The Magpies wore their white and green third kit in a move that will likely have given Ollie Holt and Miguel Delaney a lovely migraine each.
The game kicked off at 8pm local time, 5pm UK time and for the first few minutes it looked like Newcastle would be in for a tough challenge as Al-Hilal passed the ball around nicely and moved forward with purpose, but it wasn’t long before the visitors took the lead when, following a corner, Jacob Murphy pinged in a cross which was met by the head of Joelinton and powered into the back of the net on seven minutes.
Newcastle took control of the game from then on but were put under pressure once or twice with debutant, Loris Karius called into action on a couple of occasions. As the half rolled on, Newcastle were forced into a change with Chris Wood hooked to make way for Sean Longstaff after he looked to have picked up a knock. To be fair, Wood had barely had a sniff all game, so losing him wasn’t too detrimental to how we played.
Three minutes later, Newcastle had doubled their lead when Joe Willock threaded a ball through to Joelinton who took it in his stride and hit the ball through the legs of the keeper who managed to take the sting off the shot, but not enough to prevent it rolling into the net.
Eddie Howe made a few changes at halftime with Mark Gillespie replacing Loris Karius and Miguel Almiron for Jacob Murphy. Once again, Al-Hilal started the half positively, but Newcastle soon got a grip on the game and dominated for the remainder of the match.
Howe continued to make changes throughout the half to ensure that everyone named in the squad had time to show what they could do. But it was old faithful, Miguel Almiron who was next to find the back of the net, stealing the ball from a defender and charging forward, despite an obvious shirt pull, Miggy broke free and slotted the ball into the bottom corner.
It wasn’t long before Miggy doubled his tally after Sean Longstaff dinked a ball over the defence for Almiron to run onto and volley the ball into the ground and into the far side of the goal.
Not content with four goals, however, Newcastle grabbed a fifth with five minutes remaining when Ryan Fraser ran down the left wing and fired a cross to the far post where youngster, Dylan Stephenson was there to tap the ball home.
All in all it was an impressive performance from the lads, and it was great to see some of the youth players getting a change to strut their stuff on the big stage for Eddie Howe. I do wonder how many more goals we’d have gotten if the referee had blown for several fouls on Newcastle players that he blatantly ignored.
One disawed and Miggy hit the bar.