Kaiser

by Rob Smyth

  The da Silva family can see Júnior’s half a life and raise it. ‘Flamengo,’ says Wallace, ‘is our life story.’ He and his brother Valtinho started their careers at the club; their father Silva, who was part of Brazil’s 1966 World Cup squad, top-scored in three of his four seasons with Flamengo. All three are now employed by the club as coaches, while other relatives have taken part in rowing, athletics, judo and basketball. It gives new meaning to the idea of a family club.

  Silva is in his late seventies, and his eyes come alive when he is asked what it’s like to wear the shirt. ‘Kid, you don’t even know. Not even the Brazilian national shirt has the same effect as the Flamengo one. That’s why people say it’s the “holy robe”. I can’t find the words to explain how huge Flamengo is.’

  There may be no words, but there is a number. ‘We represent forty million fans,’ said the goalkeeper Diego Alves in 2017. Flamengo have more supporters than any other club in the world. That widely cited figure of forty million is a fifth of the population of Brazil and more than the entire population of Argentina. The fact they have generally played their home games at the Maracanã, the temple of world football, adds to the sense of Flamengo as a religious experience. The holy robe, their famous red and black shirt, is the most iconic in Brazilian club football.

  Kaiser joined Flamengo just as they were about to enjoy the greatest period in their history. Between 1980 and 1983 they won three national titles, the first in the club’s history, as well as a state championship, the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup. That included a magical twenty-day period at the end of 1981 when they became, in chronological order, the champions of South America, the champions of Rio and finally the champions of the world. ‘The best football team I’ve ever seen play was Flamengo in 1981,’ says the veteran journalist Renato Maurício Prado. ‘I would go as far to say that if that Flamengo team played the great Barcelona side of Xavi, Iniesta and Messi, I don’t know who’d win.’

  The team was built around the J–Z axis. Nobody has played more games for Flamengo than Júnior; nobody has scored more goals for them than Zico. The exact totals are not easy to verify – Brazilian football has never had a particularly anal culture – but the official club site says Júnior played 876 games and Zico scored 508 goals. Júnior was a left-back for most of his career, though that position was just a basis for negotiation: he might be the first defender in world football to have had a free role.

  Flamengo’s triumph in the Copa Libertadores, the South American equivalent of the European Cup, included one notorious, chaotic match. They finished level with another Brazilian team, Atlético Mineiro, in the first group stage, which meant a playoff in Goiânia to see who would qualify. The match was played on a pitch that had been cut in a bizarre pattern, a two-tone mess of ovals inside rectangles that looked like the dance floor in a theme nightclub.

  The referee José Roberto Wright – who would later become famous for booking England’s Paul Gascoigne in the semi-final of Italia 90 – sent off four Mineiro players in the first thirty-three minutes for a range of offences, some pretty minor. The match was suspended for half an hour after a pitch invasion from fans and officials. When it resumed, the Mineiro keeper Leite went down with an injury. Wright told him to leave the field for treatment. Leite wouldn’t, so Wright sent him off ‘to put an end to all the clowning’. The game was abandoned, because Mineiro were down to six men, and Flamengo went through.

  Flamengo eventually reached the two-legged final against Cobreloa of Chile. That finished level, and Flamengo won another playoff 2-1. There were five red cards in that, too: a couple for Flamengo and three for Cobreloa. The roll call of dismissed players included the Flamengo substitute Anselmo, who it seemed was specifically brought on to be sent off. His brief was to take out Soto, the Cobreloa player who had been scraping a sharp stone against the Flamengo players. Anselmo chinned Soto off the ball and ran. Soto chased him around the field until he was able to reciprocate the gesture. Both were sent off.

  Flamengo won the Campeonato Carioca a fortnight later, and then went straight to Tokyo to play Liverpool, the champions of Europe. They won emphatically, 3-0, with all the goals in the first half. Each was created by Zico, who passed Liverpool to death.

  Football was almost a different sport in the eighties – pitches were bumpy and GBH was usually only a yellow-card offence. It shouldn’t have been possible for someone like Zico, who was 5ft 6ins and skinny, to succeed. ‘I played against him several times for Liverpool, Sampdoria and Scotland but never laid a finger on him,’ said the Liverpool midfielder Graeme Souness, who was one of the toughest players in the world. ‘He’s the only player I never actually managed to make physical contact with. He was far too bright and saw it coming.’

  Zico is remembered as a playmaker of rare genius, yet his goal record was also spectacular: he scored over 500 for Flamengo and 48 for Brazil. ‘Being the bow and the arrow came naturally to me,’ he said. The arrow struck a record 333 times at the Maracanã Stadium. ‘The Maracanã is magical,’ he says. ‘I became a symbol of the Maracanã and I’ll carry that with me for the rest of my life. The press in other states in Brazil even made fun of me, saying I only played in the Maracanã. As if I was upset by that!’

  Zico was the idol of millions, including a goofy kid called Ronaldo, Roberto Baggio and another up-and-coming attacker called Renato Gaúcho. He was Brazil’s first great No. 10, an unusual player in a country best known for its explosive attackers or deeper playmakers like Gerson and Didi. Diego Maradona called him ‘a director of games’. In style, he was more Dutch than Brazilian, an architect obsessed with the creation and exploitation of space; a schemer who solved puzzles before most players even recognised them. ‘Have you been to the Maracanã?’ says Edgar Pereira, a defender who played for Fluminense in the eighties. ‘Have you been right in the top tier? You have a perfect panoramic view of the whole field. Well, Zico played like he had that view. He saw everything.’

  ***

  Kaiser was daydreaming during a youth team game when a violent tackle from one of his team-mates led to a free-for-all involving players on both sides. The teams did not have shirt numbers on their backs, and all the referee could see were a load of mullets and Flamengo shirts. He waved the red card at Kaiser, whose pleas that the wrong mullet had been fingered fell on deaf ears. Dida, the youth coach, made Kaiser apologise to the whole team the following day; Kaiser refused, pointing out that he hadn’t committed the foul in the first place. After a week-long standoff, Kaiser was thrown out of Flamengo. He went on Radio Globo, the audio arm of Latin America’s largest media group, to apologise to Júnior, who had been influential in bringing him to the club in the first place.

  Although Kaiser was embarrassed and livid, there was an upside to the incident. It made him acutely aware of the power – and potential – of mistaken identity.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE SICKNOTE

  The staff and players at Flamengo had sympathy with Kaiser, and he was allowed to continue training at the club even though he was no longer an official part of the youth team. He was determined to show Flamengo what they had lost. He also wanted to take action against Dida, the man who had sacked him. It was time to channel his inner Saci Pererê. Kaiser snipped the elastic in Dida’s shorts, slipped cachaça (a spirit made from distilled sugarcane juice) in his water bottle and started spreading rumours that his sons were gay. Dida knew what Kaiser was up to; Kaiser knew Dida couldn’t prove a thing.

  A few weeks later Kaiser was included in a reserves training game in Gavea, which had been arranged so that the Mexican club Puebla could look at a potential signing, the forward Beijoca. Kaiser starred, scoring two goals in a performance of such vigour and dynamism as to surprise himself, never mind anyone else.

  In 1979, scouting was not a sophisticated business. A whim was usually enough to push a deal through. The Puebla scouts were so taken with Kaiser that they recommended the club sign him instead of Beijoca. Soon he was on
his way to Mexico. ‘They had high expectations,’ says Kaiser. ‘It was the same everywhere. I was never a great player – but I looked like one. When I got off the plane it was as if they’d signed David Beckham. I had charisma, lustre, which is rare. You’re either born with it or not.’

  Kaiser’s aunts told him scare stories about Mexico, that it was no place for a sixteen-year-old to go on his own. Most of them didn’t go in one ear, never mind out the other. When Kaiser arrived in Puebla he had a sore thigh and suggested that it might be a good idea if he didn’t train for the first few days. He noticed how readily the coaching staff accepted his self-certificate sick note. They didn’t even ask him to do a fitness test.

  While he was injured Kaiser started to explore Puebla. He brought hardly any belongings with him so would often wear his club kit, which led to many approaches in the street. Kaiser’s Spanish was rudimentary and there was much awkward miming with fans and team-mates. The situation was not ideal, but it was something for others to address. If people wanted to talk to him, they could learn Portuguese.

  Kaiser’s enjoyment of his burgeoning fame grew in inverse proportion to his enthusiasm for the thing that made him famous. It’s often assumed that all footballers have their dream job. Some just do it because they are good at it. ‘I’d lost interest in football by the time I went to Mexico,’ says Kaiser. ‘I didn’t want to play. The reason I was a footballer is because it gave me easier access to women. I wanted to live the glamour of football but I didn’t want to live the routine. That was a chore for me. I see myself as a positive example, not a negative one.’

  ***

  As the ball was played forward, Kaiser curved his run in between the centre-back and left-back. He sprinted through on goal, faced up the goalkeeper, cocked his right leg … and fell in a heap.

  ‘Aaagh!’ he screamed. ‘Son of a fucking bitch!’

  When his team-mates gathered round, Kaiser gritted his teeth and squealed that he had torn a muscle in his thigh. He slapped the ground repeatedly in frustration before being helped off the pitch and into the physio’s room. It was his first day of training with Puebla.

  There wasn’t a thing wrong with Kaiser. In those days there was no MRI technology, so medical departments had no way of assessing muscle injuries. Ultrasound scans were useful but unreliable. The injured player’s word was a more accurate guide. No footballer lied about being injured. The only problem for physios was those who were so desperate to play that they declared themselves fit when they were not.

  Kaiser played on this assumption. His spell at Puebla provided the template for his fauxcation. He avoided playing by faking injury, usually something undetectable like a thigh or hamstring problem, and repeated the trick everywhere he went. It would be impossible now, because of the advances in technology and communication, but in the eighties word travelled very slowly, if it travelled at all, and few people had any idea that Kaiser was starring in his own version of Groundhog Day. ‘I did anything not to play,’ he says. ‘I felt no obligation whatsoever to Puebla. I spent three years having them on.’

  He spent most of those three years with an unlikely fashion accessory – a support bandage wrapped ostentatiously around his left thigh. Puebla were the first club to give Kaiser the full treatment: ice, injections, physio and a supply of anti-inflammatories that might as well have been Smarties. Nothing could cure his niggling thigh injury.

  ‘This is the story of an anti-footballer,’ says Kaiser. ‘I’d like you to use that: an anti-footballer. I want to clarify that I was signed by these clubs but I never played for them. I was a footballer, not a football player. When people call me a liar it pisses me off because lying would be saying that I chested the ball down and scored from twenty-five yards. There aren’t any stories like that. There are no lies. I wanted to live the off-the-field life so I had to be in the football industry. I gave up tons of cash. I could have been a trillionaire if I’d kept to all the contracts I’d signed. Everyone tried to get me to take it more seriously, but I didn’t want to play football. Not even Jesus pleased everybody. Why would I?’

  When Kaiser heard rumours that Puebla wanted to cancel his contract, he started dating the niece of the president to ensure he was kept on. It was an ingenious virtuous circle. The main reason she was going out with Kaiser was that he was a Puebla player, and the main reason he was still a Puebla player was that he was going out with her.

  Kaiser’s love of women intensified during his time in Mexico. He was happy to chat up anybody, anywhere, and took advantage of the language barrier to portray himself as shy and kooky, a Portuguese-speaking enigma from Rio. He had a string of casual relationships but was still shocked when, just after his seventeenth birthday, he was told he was to become a father. Parenthood terrified Kaiser. ‘I wasn’t mentally ready,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think I deserved to be anyone’s father.’ The mother, whom Kaiser had met during a trip to Mexico City, decided to have the baby on her own.

  ***

  After eight months of treating Kaiser’s muscle injury, and with the supply of anti-inflammatories in Puebla at critically low levels, the coaching staff suggested he continue his rehabilitation at a club in Rio. He would then return to Mexico when he was ready to play. When the president queried the plan on account of Kaiser’s relationship with his niece, Kaiser delivered a majestic monologue about how homesick he was, and how his aunt was extremely ill. The president gave Kaiser his blessing and paid for a first-class plane ticket.

  Kaiser returned to live with his aunts, both of them in great health, and asked his friend Maurício if he could come along to training at America RJ, a small Rio club that had built a reputation as the neutrals’ favourites. Kaiser spent most days sitting watching the players, telling stories and chatting up the women who liked to hang out at the training ground. He was starting to realise he had quite a mouth on him, and that he had the effortless ability to make people laugh or smile. One day he told a girl he was on a mid-season break at Puebla, where he was the league’s leading scorer with twenty-seven goals in twenty-one games. He was almost surprised to hear the words come out of his mouth, but the girl’s star-struck reaction – and her subsequent interest in him – made an impact on Kaiser. He was becoming aware that truth need not be an absolute concept, and started to play Chinese whispers in his own head.

  There was not a huge amount of money in pretending to be a footballer. Kaiser’s contracts tended to be short, sometimes minimum-wage, and most players did not earn that much in the 1980s anyway. Kaiser also struggled to save money for tomorrow, never mind the distant future. But he usually had enough to sustain himself, especially as each contract came with a healthy signing-on fee. Besides, what Kaiser really wanted was not cash but cachet.

  It was around the same time that he started to pour more resources into a self-promotion campaign. At eighteen he became the de facto PR manager for Regine’s, a nightclub underneath the Meridian hotel. He was given the role mainly because the owner was impressed by his status as the leading goalscorer in the Mexican league. Kaiser adapted his stories as necessary. If he thought he was talking to a woman who liked a bad boy, then he was in Rio after being banned for a month for punching a referee.

  The ability to think on his feet was one of Kaiser’s greatest strengths. But even he was struggling when he was having sex with a married woman and her husband arrived home. Kaiser ran onto the balcony, wearing only a nervous frown, and stood waiting. His mood wasn’t improved when he saw an old lady in a nearby favela pointing him out to all and sundry. After a few minutes, the door opened and a giant of a man walked out. Kaiser quivered as 6ft 4ins of cuckolded masculinity looked him down and further down.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here? Have you been with my wif—’

  ‘Sir, please excuse me. I climbed up to your balcony from the flat downstairs. I was with Mrs Ortiz and her brother-in-law arrived. I had no idea she was married and I was terrified he would beat me. I’m only a kid, I didn’t mean for this
to happen.’

  ‘Fuck off! You’ve been sleeping with my wife!’

  ‘Sir, please, think about it. If I was with your wife, do you think I would be standing out here waiting for you to sort me out? I would have jumped up to the next balcony or to the one below. I know I’ve done something bad, but I’m not that stupid. I’ve never even met your wife.’

  The husband considered Kaiser’s story for a few seconds, then called his wife over. ‘See,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly why I don’t like you going out with that whore downstairs.’

  Kaiser was at Puebla off and on – and having them on – for three years before he left the club and returned permanently to Brazil. ‘The town was too small for my taste. Living in those places bores me. I’m completely urbanised. You get sick of the place, just like you get fed up of being at a club for so long. That goalkeeper Rogerio Ceni stayed at São Paulo for two hundred years. Good for him. He loves football and he loves São Paulo. Not in my case. I love myself. I want to feel good.’

  ***

  The only place Kaiser felt good was in Rio. He went back to America, the club, and idled around the training ground. Few people questioned him being there, especially as he was such good friends with the club’s best player, the attacker Maurício. He also got on famously with the president, Francisco Cantizano, who loved Kaiser’s mischievous wit – not to mention that he was invariably surrounded by beautiful women. Kaiser learned an important lesson from his fallout with Charles Bole at Botafogo. After that, he made sure he befriended the president wherever he went, and by whatever means necessary.

  After a few months there were some murmurs of discontent about Kaiser’s never-ending thigh injury. A couple of days later, Kaiser arrived at training armed with a detailed, official document explaining his injury: it was all linked to a dental problem, and Kaiser needed to undergo further tests to see if he was suffering from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a rare neurological disorder. Cantizano and other senior figures concluded that it was too absurd not to be true. Even thirty-five years later, Kaiser remembers it well. ‘Pure lies,’ he says. ‘I had a friend who was a dentist. He wrote it on official headed paper for me. My teeth were fine and so were my muscles.’