[TV] The Phenomenon: Ronaldo (BBC iPlayer)

[Brightonfan1983]

Has anyone watched this? I popped it on this evening, being at a bit of a loose end, and not being that bothered given that we all know 'he was very good and had a stupid haircut and then got fat'.

I didn't know half of what I didn't know, or something. He comes across as such a nice man, the France 98 story is very interesting, his injuries were terrible (and incidentally a reminder of how far medical science has come on in the short 20 years or so since), Christian Vieri is hilarious, Roberto Carlos is insightful, sensitive and caring.

Recent sports docs seem to have gone down the Asif Kapadia route of a lot of archive footage and minimal speech, which is pretty much the case here, and it's all the better for it. Admittedly there're no Maradona-esque shenanigans to delve into and overall it's a simple story, but it's very well told and well, human. He can get as large as he wants as far as I'm concerned, he's more than deserved it! Excellent stuff.

 

[Klaas]

Have heard good things about this and am interested to watch it just to remind myself how good he was.

 

[Swansman]

Sounds interesting, probably difficult for me to access unfortunately.

He always comes across as a nice and down-to-earth bloke. Lots of Brazilian footballers goes from being poor and uneducated to bathing in money, and get corrupted from it. Pretty much every active Brazilian top footballer supports Bolsonaro (because he allows them to avoid taxes) for example. Only exception to that is Richarlison, who despite his dislikable on-the-pitch persona is a brilliant, brilliant man off it.

Most end up like Romario or Pele, proper ****s both of them and not particularly popular in Brazil. Takes a lot of personality and brain to avoid allowing money to turn you into shite when you come from shite conditions.