Yeah, who used to know Al Nassar this much except for the coming of Ronaldo, Al-Nassr has become more popular as a team
Cristiano Ronaldo joined Al-Nassr and helped this club becomes more famous as well as the Saudi Professional League. The club has to pay him very lucrative salary but I believe they do it in a strategic program of Saudi Arabia government to help their national league more popular and intend to help increasing quality fo the league and grow their youth players by training, and playing together with star players from Europe.
in terms of performance than they used to be before and now are able to challenge Al Hillal, but the truth is that Ronaldo cannot do this whole job alone, but has really done his part as an individual player
He can help Al-Nassr in attacking and score many goals for them but he can not do considerable contribution for their defense system. Cristiano Ronaldo is very old and he no longer can run too much to contribute for proactively defense in the front line. This affects Al-Nassr defense but the main task of defense belongs to midfielders and defenders who are not playing too good.
Since Al Hillal has become a major stumbling block for them, maybe some changes needs to be done, one should be looking at the manager in charge and second is trying to get in some new players into the team, I believe this way Al-Nassr will be able to get rid of their major opponent team Al Hillal and possibly lifting the trophy.
Al-Nassr only can compete with Al-Hilal in direct matches and through a long season, if they can improve defense. With weak defense system, they will surely lose many points to many clubs in Saudi Professional League and will lose the title to Al-Hilal.