Al-Hilal's Perfect Start Shattered by NEOM Ambush
Al-Hilal arrived riding a wave. Five wins on the spin, top of the Roshn League, and playing like a side that had forgotten how to lose. Then the first punch landed before a ball was even kicked.
Yassine Bounou pulled up injured in the warm-up. One of the league’s standout goalkeepers was out, and Mohammed Al-Owais was hurried into the XI. The mood shifted. The leaders never quite recovered.
NEOM shut the door
From the opening whistle, NEOM smelled vulnerability and went for the throat with organisation, not chaos. Compact lines, ruthless discipline, no space between the lines. Every time an Al-Hilal shirt drifted into the final third, a white wall closed in.
The Blues’ stars kept running into traffic. NEOM squeezed the central areas, forced shots from distance, and stripped the leaders of their usual fluency. Sultan Al-Ghannam tried to punch holes from wide. Krisencio Summerville probed. Nothing stuck.
Then came the setback that set the tone.
On 15 minutes, Kalidou Koulibaly, usually the rock at the back, turned into the man who cracked. Under pressure, he diverted the ball into his own net, gifting NEOM a shock lead and ripping up Simone Inzaghi’s script. One moment of misfortune, and the game tilted.
Al-Hilal tried to respond immediately, but every attack felt laboured. Half-chances, blocked efforts, speculative strikes from outside the box. NEOM’s defensive block stayed calm, absorbed everything, and waited for the leaders to grow frustrated.
Inzaghi rolls the dice
After the break, Inzaghi moved. He shook his bench and sent on Nasser Al-Dawsari, Sultan Mandash and Mohamed Kader Mete, chasing sharper movement and more direct threat. The tempo rose. So did the tension.
The turning point should have arrived in the 50th minute. Gabriel Martinelli burst clear, clean through on the NEOM goal. This was the moment to drag Al-Hilal back into it. Instead, he squandered the one-on-one, the chance slipping away with a weak finish.
Three minutes later, Ruben Neves tried to take matters into his own hands. He bent a trademark effort toward the far corner, only to watch it curl just wide of the left post. The pressure was building. NEOM were wobbling, but not breaking.
And then Marcin Bulka took over the night.
Bulka slams the door shut
On 65 minutes, Bulka produced the save that broke Al-Hilal’s belief. Ollie Watkins rose inside the box and powered a header toward goal, the kind he usually buries. Bulka reacted brilliantly, springing across to claw it away and keep NEOM in front.
It wasn’t a one-off. The NEOM goalkeeper had already denied Al-Hilal more than once in the half, reading angles, claiming crosses, and turning away efforts that usually find the net. With every stop, he drained more confidence from the league leaders.
From there, NEOM tightened the screw. They managed the clock, slowed the rhythm, and killed the game’s chaos. Al-Hilal pushed, but the attacks grew increasingly desperate. NEOM stayed calm, saw it out, and walked away with a ruthless 2-0 win.
A streak snapped, a title race stirred
The numbers tell the story of how big this was. Al-Hilal stayed stuck on 15 points, beaten for the first time in the Roshn League this season and stripped of their perfect start. The defeat also marked their first domestic loss since Simone Inzaghi took charge at the start of last season. An era of invincibility, at least in the league, finally cracked.
NEOM, meanwhile, climbed to 12 points with their fourth win of the campaign. Not just three points, but a statement: the leaders can be suffocated, hurried, and beaten.
And somewhere in Riyadh, Al-Nassr will have watched with interest. Also on 12 points heading into the round, they now know that a win over Abha on Wednesday would cut the gap to a single point.
Al-Hilal have dominated the early narrative. Now the question hangs over the title race: was this just a stumble, or the night the door truly opened for the chasing pack?
