Review: ‘Ronaldo X Faker: THE PHENOM’ is a Necessary Piece of Garbage

Kwanghee Woo
Aug 9, 2017 · 4 min read

I love OnGameNet. The Korean broadcaster takes young men who play video games and transforms them into the heroic gladiators of the modern era who fight for glory and the adoration of the crowd. It’s cheesy as hell, but the end product is so enthralling that no one really cares. It’s pro-wrestling. It’s anime. It’s esports.

However, even OnGameNet (OGN) fucks up sometimes. When Brazilian football legend (and recent esports investor) Ronaldo showed up at the 2017 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational, OGN used the opportunity to produce “Ronaldo X Faker: The Phenom,” a documentary joining the traditional and electronics sports worlds.

Unfortunately, “Ronaldo X Faker” is a painfully awkward pairing, and achieves nothing else but to glorify Faker and reduce his illustrious counterpart to a lifeless prop.

‘Ronaldo X Faker’ is available to watch on OnGameNet’s Youtube channel.

The format of the three-part series is to trace the paths of Ronaldo and Faker and draw parallels between their legendary careers. The problem is, most of these comparisons are bad.

For instance, Ronaldo’s story begins with him talking about how he grew up on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where he was so poor that he had trouble paying the fare to get to football practice. Ronaldo’s manager relates an anecdote about how Ronaldo couldn’t even afford food at times, and that a generous food vendor helped him get meals.

Meanwhile, Faker says “I think my family was poor” and that he worried about racking up the electricity bill from playing so many computer games. It’s hardly an equivalent struggle to Ronaldo’s, but it’s shoehorned in for the sake of narrative.

If that parallel is awkward, then the next one is downright embarrassing. After experience meteoric rises to the pinnacles of their respective fields, both Ronaldo and Faker are faced with hardships they must overcome. For Ronaldo, it’s a knee injury in that nearly ends his career. For Faker, it’s going into a lengthy slump… …and subsequently getting flamed by fans.

I’m not kidding. The documentary equates a crippling injury that caused Ronaldo to miss an entire season and directly affected his athleticism for the rest of his career, with Faker getting criticized by people on the internet for a stretch of poor form. Seriously, what the fuck?

It’s a shame that OGN’s execution is so ham-fisted, because when you remove the embarrassing comparisons, there is a somewhat cohesive, parallel story being told: Both Ronaldo and Faker enjoyed meteoric rises to stardom, both of them were known for making scintillating plays that none of their peers were capable of, and both of them led their countries to the holy grail in international competition.

The other major fault of “Ronaldo X Faker” is how blatantly disinterested it is in competitive football, which it dumbs down to an insulting level. Ronaldo wins unspecified “championships” and “awards,” scores tons of goals, and enjoys general “success” against unnamed opponents.

On the other hand, Faker’s debut match is narrated in detail by the LCK commentators, who describe the shock of seeing the rookie Faker solo-kill a vastly more establishes star in Ambition. Faker’s first championship run in OGN Champions 2013 Summer is also spotlighted, and is depicted as a triumph against bitter rivals in the KT Bullets (an innocent Ryu dies yet again).

The only moments of Ronaldo’s professional career that are given any close attention are his World Cup appearances, notably his tournament-winning performance at the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup. That’s an event that even the most sports agnostic Korean is familiar with, and it’s used as Ronaldo’s “comeback” moment in the parallel story arcs (for Faker, it’s going on to win Worlds in 2015 and 2016).

There’s nothing wrong with the fact that “Ronaldo X Faker” is aimed almost exclusively at League of Legends fans. But even League of Legends fans would have been better served by a more three dimensional portrayal of professional football. Clubs like Internazionale and Barcelona — instead of being name dropped without a purpose — could be introduced as the biggest clubs in the world that broke transfer fee records to acquire Ronaldo’s services. When there’s an image of a 20-year-old Ronaldo accepting the FIFA World Player of the Year trophy, it might be edifying to talk about the 30+ year old George Weah and Alan Shearer he was selected over in a symbolic passing of the guard.

Ronaldo isn’t the co-star of this piece, nor is he even an extra. He’s a prop that’s given just the bare minimum amount of spotlight, so that some of it can be reflected onto Faker.

The story concludes with the two finally meeting at MSI 2017, where Ronaldo presents Faker and a triumphant SK Telecom T1 team with their winners’ medals. As a fan of competitive football, it was pretty damn cool to watch that moment live, and it was still poignant when I saw it again in documentary form. I have to wonder, how many of the LoL fans who watched
“Ronaldo X Faker” felt anything when they saw Faker shake hands with a cardboard cutout of a legend.


The saddest thing about “Ronaldo X Faker” is that it’s a documentary that NEEDS to exist. As much as I think it’s trash, it still has value simply by virtue of existing.

I’m regularly saddened by how poorly the legacy of past generations of progamers has been preserved. Boxer and Nada are remembered mostly as elder statesmen of esports, when they should be enshrined as legends with whom maybe one or two members of the current generation deserve comparison.

If those names aren’t familiar to you: that’s the point. It’s a warning to what Faker might become some day in the distant future, if we take him for granted in the present and don’t celebrate the level of transcendent superstardom he has achieved. He deserves every bit of the hackneyed, bumbling adulation that “Ronaldo X Faker” heaps upon him, because even bad content helps preserve his tremendous legacy.

In conclusion: OnGameNet, I still love you, and thank you for making this documentary I hated.

Rating: 1/5 stars

Kwanghee Woo

AKA ‘Waxangel’ or ‘Wax.’ Formerly editor in chief of TeamLiquid.net. Presently an esports something-er.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade