by Rob Smyth
Kaiser was so unconsciously addicted to hamming up his imaginary injury that he encouraged the physios to try anything, no matter how unorthodox. They did. Kaiser was given regular injections of corticoid in his groin, which had little impact on his thigh but plenty on his stomach. The corticoid reacted and made him put on over two stone in six months. Even now, he gets annoyed when he remembers people laughing about it. ‘It’s one thing being fat from being fat,’ he says. ‘It’s another from having to keep using corticoid.’
Kaiser eventually got another letter from his dentist, prohibiting the use of corticoid, and went on a demented weight-loss programme that consisted of little more than water and salad. Kaiser knew that, while he could fake most things about being a footballer, an athletic body was non-negotiable.
Tele Santana walked wearily into the press conference. His Brazil team had just been knocked out of the World Cup after losing 3-2 to the eventual winners Italy in an epic match, and he knew what that meant for the coach: effigies, abuse, probably a P45. But first, a vicious interrogation from the media. Yet the moment Santana entered the room, 200 journalists from around the world gave him a standing ovation. They did it again when he left a few minutes later. It was recognition of one of the most stylish teams ever to play in the World Cup, and bittersweet validation of Santana’s beliefs.
A few minutes earlier, in his own quiet way, Santana had done something similar to his team. He broke the dressing-room silence to tell them that, while on paper they had only reached the last twelve of the tournament, in reality they had achieved something far greater. ‘The whole world was enchanted by you,’ he said. ‘Be aware of that.’
Santana was the last incurable romantic of Brazilian football. He coached the 1982 team, which left an indelible mark on the World Cup despite only reaching the second group stage, and returned to do something similar in 1986.
Brazil were so serious about winning the 1982 World Cup that Socrates, their bohemian captain, even gave up booze and cigarettes for the tournament. He said that he got as much pleasure from playing in that team as he would if he had won the tournament, and there was plenty of truth in that. But no matter how many philosophical lines he produced – ‘those who seek victory are just conformists’ was one such – his eyes told a more nuanced story. It was heartbreaking that Brazil did not win the World Cup: for Socrates, for almost everyone in the world who loved football. One Brazil fan committed suicide even before the Italy game had ended.
There is a good argument that they were the most exciting attacking team ever to play the game. They scored fourteen goals in five games, most of them so spectacular as to form a portfolio that most international teams couldn’t match in their entire history. They played a lopsided, freestyle formation that might be best described as 2-7-1, and that 3-2 defeat to a more streetwise Italy – ‘the day football died’, said both Zico and Socrates – is arguably the greatest game in football history.
Between 1950 and 2010, Brazil won the World Cup in every decade but one: the 1980s. Yet it is remembered with the utmost fondness; a time when Jogo Bonito was a reality rather than a marketing slogan. ‘It was the artists’ decade,’ says the journalist Renato Maurício Prado. ‘Talent would decide things in the 1980s. Now fitness is the priority. Socrates wasn’t an athlete. He would have no chance of being a player nowadays. Imagine! He used to smoke in the dressing room.’
It’s a recurring complaint among older generations: that today’s players are athletes first, footballers second. In the 1980s, technique was the only accepted currency. ‘Before training we used to play piggy in the middle, where you have a circle of players with the ball and one or two players running after it,’ says Bebeto, who emerged at Flamengo in that time. ‘Each person could only touch it once. The ball couldn’t stop. I had that drilled into my head. The older players would shout, “First time! First time! You can’t control it in the penalty area!” You had to be seriously good to get in that Flamengo team. Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona are the modern team that most resembles our generation.’
The comparisons between Santana and Guardiola are striking. ‘He preached the concept of tiki-taka in the 1980s,’ says Edgar Pereira. Both are revered for their approach, but it can be hard work making football look effortless. Like Guardiola, Santana was a strict coach addicted to the frustration of chasing perfection.
Although the 1982 team did not win the tournament, the way they played enhanced the status of Brazilian footballers. After the relative tedium of the 1974 and 1978 World Cups, Brazil were again the sexiest, most glamorous team in the world – on and off the field. Roberto Falcão, the AS Roma midfielder who won the Silver Ball for the second-best player at the 1982 World Cup, even dated the original Bond girl Ursula Andress.
It was the perfect time for Kaiser to be making his way in the game – especially as he was about to befriend the most glamorous player of the lot.
CHAPTER 6
THE DOPPELGÄNGER
Unlike those who worked for a living, Kaiser looked forward to getting up on a Monday. Every week his alarm would rip him from his sleep at midday and he would set off towards Miguel Lemos Road. There was always a gathering of Rio’s star footballers for a game of footvolley – a cross between football and volleyball – on Copacabana Beach. It was a stage for the players to show off their skills, and their bodies, to the general public; to flirt and sup tooth-tinglingly cold beers. For Kaiser, it was an unmissable chance to network and increase his profile.
He became part of the group through his friendships with players like Maurício. He rarely got his toes sandy and it became a running gag whether Kaiser would play. Kaiser says his favourite film is Catch Me If You Can, the Steven Spielberg film about the famous con man Frank Abagnale. Kaiser’s story was more Play Me If You Can, as a series of coaches and players took part in the futile endeavour of trying to get him to play football.
Kaiser usually strutted around the beach wearing nothing but a pair of Speedos – he usually bought them one size too small – and aviator shades. ‘I always wore Speedos,’ he says. ‘With my beautiful legs, what else would I do?’ In those days, dental-floss bikinis were the female equivalent of Speedos. Everywhere he looked, Kaiser saw tanned, toned flesh.
A chance meeting made Kaiser focus even more on his look. One week he was introduced to Renato Gaúcho, the most exciting young attacker in Brazil, who was in town for a game with his club Grêmio. It was the start of an enduring friendship. ‘Renato Gaúcho,’ says Kaiser now, ‘is the most important person in my life.’
His official name was Renato Portaluppi. But as he was born in Porto Alegre, the state historically famous for its cowboys, he was known to all as Renato Gaúcho.
Renato is the superstar Europe never knew. He was one of the greatest Brazilian attackers of his generation, an explosive right-winger with a pioneering combination of athleticism and skill. But the fact he played only seven minutes at the World Cup – and had a disastrous spell at Roma, the only time he left Brazil – meant he remained largely unknown overseas.
‘He was as good as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Neymar,’ says Bebeto, who played with him at Flamengo. ‘A great player with insane potential. He was so powerful that when he ran at you, you couldn’t stop him. I’ve never seen a better crosser. He didn’t cross it, he passed it. The only difference between Renato and Ronaldo or Messi is that he loved going out at night.’
A teenage Renato announced himself in the 1982 Campeonato Brasileiro final, when he destroyed Flamengo’s great left-back Júnior. Flamengo won the match but Grêmio’s runner-up spot was enough for a place in the Copa Libertadores. After the game, Renato Maurício Prado went into the Flamengo dressing room to interview Júnior. ‘Who the fuck is that right-winger?’ he asked. ‘What the hell was that?’
The World Cup may have passed him by, but Renato still managed to become world champion. In 1983, at the age of twenty-one, he inspired Grêmio to win the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup, the
one-off match between the champions of Europe and South America. Both victories included legendary examples of his explosive ability. The first came in the second leg of the Libertadores final against Peñarol of Uruguay; with fourteen minutes remaining, the aggregate score was 2-2 and heading for a third match. (At that stage a penalty shoot-out was only used after a replay.) Renato was boxed in by the right touchline, with no decent options. So he created a new one: he scooped the ball up – just enough to get the necessary elevation, not so much that the defenders could get to him – and smashed a huge, booming cross to the far post, where César scored with a flying header. It was an outrageous piece of improvisation. César’s goal turned out to be the winner.
Five months later, Grêmio met the European champions Hamburg in the Intercontinental Cup final in Tokyo. They won 2-1 after extra-time, with Renato scoring both goals. The first came after he twisted Holder Hieronymus inside out and belted a shot through Uli Stein; for the second, he dummied to shoot, came inside Michael Schrode and finished decisively with his left foot. Renato’s role in Grêmio’s greatest year means he is seen by many as the most important player in the club’s history, high praise given their alumni include World Cup winners like Ronaldinho and Everaldo.
He didn’t stay at Grêmio forever. In Brazil it was normal for superstars to move around, and Renato became a kind of journeyman idol. ‘Star players get a free pass,’ says the larger than life broadcaster and former Flamengo manager Washington Rodrigues. ‘They transcend those rivalries because they are immediately accepted. He could go to Flamengo and join Vasco da Gama ten minutes later and people would still be overjoyed because he’s friendly and charismatic as well as being an incredible footballer.’
Renato was an atypical Brazilian attacker – tall, muscular and explosive. He played as a roaming winger with an unorthodox, almost rambling style, and usually with his socks round his ankles. He didn’t always look elegant with the ball, and even his famous, brilliant first goal against Hamburg involves a fair degree of improvised stumbling. Yet there was usually method in his untidiness, and it came off far too often to be described as a fluke. He had a polygamous relationship with the sublime and the ridiculous, but at his best he was decisive and devastatingly effective.
‘Renato Gaúcho is the perfect male specimen,’ says Washington Rodrigues. ‘Renato is an exception to the normal body type. He combines strength, skill and speed, which is extremely rare in a single player. And his greatest asset? He has the strength and guts of a Gaúcho and the swagger and cunning of a Carioca. He’s a Cariucho.’
The paradox of Renato is that, though he was one of the stars of such a celebrated era, he also foreshadowed an unwelcome change in the DNA of Brazilian football. ‘He represented the transition from the 1980s into the 2000s,’ says Renato Maurício Prado. ‘He was still a very skilful player but he was strong, too. As Nelson Rodrigues says, he was as healthy as a prize cow. But he was totally irresponsible. Renato’s career could have been a lot better, even though it was already very successful. He was always going out. He was a real laugh.’
Renato boasted about his ability to burn the candle at both ends. ‘If he went to bed at five in the morning he’d turn up for training at seven,’ says Pica-pau, who became his adviser. ‘He’d go home and sleep in the afternoon. He didn’t drink that much. He’d have a beer but it would last an hour. He’d have ten small beers in a whole night. So he took it easy.’
He was the first sex symbol of Brazilian football, a man whose appeal went so far beyond the pitch that he is often retrospectively compared to David Beckham. He was constantly on non-football TV shows and became a style icon who could start trends without realising. The huge popularity of mirrored sunglasses in Rio in the mid-1980s could be traced back to a picture of Renato standing with a girl reflected in his shades.
Renato was almost too hunky to function. He was the kind of man who was constantly objectified by himself, never mind anyone else. Videos of him playing footvolley almost needed an adult classification: he would walk round in Speedos that looked excruciatingly tight, ostentatiously spraying his whole body with a hose between matches.
There had been other pop star players before, but none who received the kind of attention usually reserved for boy band members. ‘When he tied his hair back,’ says Kaiser with fraternal pride, ‘he looked like Richard Gere.’ That is one of many references to Renato that instantly evoke a particular decade. When people describe him now, they invariably use the most 1980s of words: heart-throb. ‘He was like a soap-opera star and that appealed to young people, especially young girls,’ says the famous TV presenter José Carlos Araújo.
Renato brought an element of the soap opera to football, too, particularly with pre-match interviews that were full of trash talk. He had an instinctive ability to tread the lines between playful and serious, not to mention confident and arrogant. His default look was a knowing half-smirk that could be taken any number of ways. It is said that Renato once met Pelé in a nightclub and announced that, for each of the 1,284 goals Pele had scored, Renato had a notch on the bedpost. A confused Pelé asked whether this was officially documented.
‘Renato was a lad in the good sense of the word,’ says Washington Rodrigues. ‘He was relaxed, likeable, friendly, affable. But he was a ladies’ man and that affected him negatively because the more conservative people in football distanced themselves from him.’
On Valentine’s Day 1985, Renato broke off from a Brazil training session to give a TV interview. He declared that he, the party boy of Brazilian football, had finally found love. He looked straight into the camera, pulled some flowers into shot, threw them in the direction of the lens and quivered, ‘I send this flower to my love.’
After a perfectly timed pause, two more flowers appeared. ‘I’ll send one to my other love, Karen.’ At this point the camera cut away to reveal a never-ending bunch of flowers, more of which were soon being thrown towards the camera as Renato wiped away tears.
‘For Maria, oh God!’
‘For my love, Carlinha.’
‘Monica, you’re amazing, I’d never forget you.’
The names of the women were those of his team-mates’ mothers. The video became so famous that in 2015 it was copied on Instagram by the Barcelona superstar Neymar.
***
Renato and Kaiser hit it off straight away. ‘We had a natural affection for each other,’ says Kaiser. ‘He identified a lot with me because his lifestyle is the same as mine. The only differences are that he’s married, rich and famous, and I’m not. But we were both born in Porto Alegre, we enjoyed the same things, had the same sense of humour and were both womanisers. We were like brothers.’
Kaiser made sure they looked like brothers, too. He considered Renato’s style, his status as a heart-throb, and decided to sell some false Gere. Over the next few months Kaiser became Renato’s Mini-Me, copying his look – especially his luxurious mullet – and physical mannerisms. He even adopted Renato’s personality, ramping up his one-liners and snappy attitude. It had the desired effect. ‘My reign truly began from 1983 when I was compared to Renato,’ says Kaiser. ‘They called me Renato’s clone. It was easy after that.’
As was often the case with Kaiser, he took an old phenomenon and gave it a fresh twist. It’s one thing to copy somebody, quite another to become their best friend.
Renato finally got to live in Rio when he moved to Flamengo in 1987 where he was part of an offensively good team that included Bebeto, Zinho and his idol Zico. In his first season, he won the Brazilian Player of the Year award. ‘I’d been coming here for four years whenever the national team convened,’ he says. ‘When I came to Rio I fell in love with it. It’s the way people live here. Easy-going, relaxed, always up for a quick beer at the end of the day. It was amazing because as well as playing alongside Zico – my idol – in the Maracanã, I won the Player of the Season award. I play with Zico and I live in Rio de Janeiro. Is there anything better than that?’
The relatively monastic Zico and Renato were very different characters, yet they got on famously on and off the pitch. ‘I love him,’ says Zico. ‘I’ve only good things to say about him. He was a real joker, great for the group. He would fool around and go out but he’d work harder than anybody at training. And he always delivered on the pitch.’
Yet Renato’s extrovert, flirtatious nature was not to all tastes. The journalist Martha Esteves recalls her fury when she was sent to do an interview profile of Flamengo’s new signing. ‘I’ve never left an editorial meeting feeling so much anger,’ she says. ‘I had a real hostility towards him. I always had a deep dislike for ladies’ men, for sexy cocky men. They really get my goat.’
She soon changed her mind. ‘I went to his house. I snooped around in every single one of his wardrobes, with all those gaudy outfits that people had in the eighties: shoulder pads, things like that. He had so many clothes. He had a huge Speedo collection. I met his fiancée, too, Maristela. It was love at first sight – with her, not with him. It was at second sight with him. After chatting for half an hour, we became friends and I did his profile. He’s an incredible person. And he was a super-important player for Flamengo, because of his charisma and talent. He’s always been a very happy person. He’s involved in a lot of social projects. Many people don’t realise how good a person he is – he has a very good heart.