Al-Hilal exited from the 2025 Club World Cup yesterday, following a 2-1 defeat to Brazil’s Fluminense in their quarter-final match.<\/p>\n
Substitute Hercules scored his second goal in as many second-half appearances to lift Fluminense into the FIFA Club World Cup semifinals with a 2-1 quarterfinal win over Al Hilal on Friday in Orlando, Fla.<\/p>\n
Martinelli also scored late in the first half to continue a fabulous tournament for the Rio de Janeiro club and Brazil overall. Palmeiras also got to the quarterfinals before falling 2-1 on Friday to Chelsea, who will oppose Fluminense on Tuesday in a semifinal match at East Rutherford, N.J.<\/p>\n
Al Hilal exits despite a fourth tournament goal for striker Marcos Leonardo, who was in for the injured Aleksandar Mitrovic.<\/p>\n
The Saudi side was the last from Asia remaining, having pulled off the tournament’s biggest upset with a 4-3, extra-time victory over Manchester City in the second round on Monday.<\/p>\n
Hercules put Fluminense in front for good in the 70th minute when he was rewarded for his own persistence.<\/p>\n
After his first long-range shot was deflected high into the air, he continued his run forward as teammate Samuel Xavier won the next header.<\/p>\n
It landed at the feet of Hercules, whose wonderful first touch put him in shooting position before his second sent a right-footed shot into the bottom left corner, prompting jubilation from yet another pro-Brazilian crowd at this tournament.<\/p>\n
Al Hilal pressured Fluminense in the dying stages, but couldn’t create a clear look on Fabio’s net.<\/p>\n
Martinelli put Fluminense in front in the 40th minute on a brilliant strike. His first touch took Gabriel Fuentes’ pass beyond a charging Al Hilal defender, and his second unleashed a ferocious left-footed shot that beat goalkeeper Yassine Bounou to the top right corner from about 15 yards.<\/p>\n
A minute into first-half stoppage time, Fluminense keeper Fabio sprawled to his left to push Kalidou Koulibaly’s powerful header beyond the post.<\/p>\n
After nearly leveling before halftime, Koulibaly won another dangerous header six minutes into the second half from a corner.<\/p>\n
This time it landed at the feet of Leonardo, who balanced himself and scooped a finish from close range past Fabio and two defenders on the line.<\/p>\n
It remained level four minutes later when Bounou sprawled to his right to take the ball off the feet of German Cano trying to round him on the dribble after intercepting a pass deep in the attacking half.<\/p>\n
Liverpool FC and Portugal national team star Diogo Joto and his brother Andre Silva, who died Thursday in Spain in a car accident, were honored with a pregame moment of silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Al-Hilal exited from the 2025 Club World Cup yesterday, following a 2-1 defeat to Brazil’s Fluminense in their quarter-final match. Substitute Hercules scored his second goal in as many second-half appearances to lift Fluminense into the FIFA Club World Cup semifinals with a 2-1 quarterfinal win over Al Hilal on Friday in Orlando, Fla. Martinelli …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50983,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50980\/revisions\/50983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}