by Rob Smyth
***
While he was at Fluminense, Kaiser was the subject of a big feature in the newspaper O Dia, which included a rare picture of him in full kit from his time at Ajaccio. In the article Kaiser complained that he had been left in limbo by Ajaccio, who would not allow him to make a permanent move back to Brazil: ‘He can’t reach a financial agreement, nor will they sell him,’ read the feature. ‘The president of the French club commented to a sporting magazine: “l’ll sell the whole team but not Charles”.’
Kaiser also embellished the story of his spells abroad at Puebla (‘We won the Mexican championship and they asked me to naturalise so that I could play for the national team’) and Independiente. No longer was he in the crowd when they won the Intercontinental Cup against Liverpool in 1984. The language of the article was sufficiently ambiguous that the reader might reasonably think he had been on the pitch, maybe even played a part in the winning goal. ‘Carlos Henrique, the poor boy from Rio, was there to lift the cup and be crowned world club champion. He returned to Brazil where there were parties, embraces, tears and emotions.’
The article also had the familiar, gratuitous reference to the fact Kaiser was single. All told, he could barely have written it better himself.
CHAPTER 16
THE PIMP
Gil flipped open his cigarette packet and sighed. He must have smoked the last one in his sleep again. He could not go without his morning cigarette, so walked down to reception to ask a porter to buy him some more. Gil was the Botafogo manager and the team, as usual, were staying in the Hotel São Francisco the night before a match. He was allowed to come and go as he pleased but wanted to show a bit of solidarity with the players, who were prohibited from leaving the building.
Gil was making small talk with the porter when a stretch limo pulled up outside. When the door opened, he was transfixed by a pair of stretch legs that emerged from the back seat. And when the rest of the body followed, Gil recognised one of Rio’s most famous actresses.
He assumed there had been a mistake. Whenever Botafogo were staying, no other celebrity functions were allowed, to ensure the players were not distracted.
The actress said hello to the porter and walked towards one of the elevators. Gil was sufficiently intrigued that he ignored his increasingly rampant nicotine cravings and got in with her.
‘Which floor?’ he asked.
‘Six, please.’
The sixth floor was where the Botafogo team were staying.
When they got out of the elevator, Gil loitered by his room door, pretending he couldn’t find his key. The actress walked down the corridor and knocked on one of the doors. It opened and a bronzed hand slowly emerged.
‘Oi!’ said Gil.
Renato Gaúcho poked his head round the door.
‘Oh, hey Gil!’
‘Yeah, hey Gil. Send that lady downstairs, man.’
‘Why?’
‘What’s she doing here? Do you want to have a nice chat with her?’
Renato walked into the corridor wearing a pair of yellow Y-fronts.
‘Yeah, she just came to chat.’
‘Nobody chats in their room this early in the morning. You can chat downstairs.’
A stand-up row ensued. ‘I can’t name the actress or I’ll probably be taken to court,’ says Gil. ‘But she went nuts at me when I wouldn’t let her in the room.’
When she eventually did go downstairs, Renato asked Gil if it might be possible to make a temporary alteration to the club’s bonus structure.
‘If I score two goals in the match today will she be allowed up before the next game?’
‘Of course she will.’
Gil was lying; he just wanted a motivated Renato to score two goals. And he did, in a 4-0 win over America de Três Rios. Renato celebrated his second goal by holding up a finger on each hand in the direction of Gil on the Botafogo bench.
The players had no access to telephones when they were staying at a hotel before a match, so Gil knew Renato’s meeting must have been arranged by an external source. He was approximately 100 per cent certain that person was Kaiser. ‘He must have got the porter in on it as well,’ laughs Gil. ‘That bloke must have taken some money to let it happen. At 7.30 in the morning as well. He probably had morning wood.’
After the game, Gil banned Renato from seeing anyone in his room before Botafogo’s next match. ‘I told him, “If I let you do it, I’ll have to let thirty others do it. Hook up with her somewhere else.” And it didn’t happen. I was lucky I ran out of cigarettes.’
It wasn’t entirely unprecedented for Kaiser to arrange sex for players. The difference at Botafogo was that he did it before games – and for the best part of five years.
***
It was normal for Brazilian players to spend the night before a match, even a home game, in a hotel. The culture of concentration – cocooning the players so that they could not get up to mischief – was well established. ‘In Rio de Janeiro you can’t trust the players at all because our culture is completely different,’ says Gil. ‘Europeans are more advanced than us. There’s trust between the club and the player. Here it’s all about samba, partying and women. And a bit of football. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Our culture doesn’t allow for the player to stay at home. Otherwise he’ll be having sex with his wife the whole night, go to bed late and when he turns up at the Maracanã the next day he’s fucked.’
Kaiser helped the more amorous Botafogo players find a little Brazilian way around the frustrations of concentration. Gil found out years later that Renato’s breakfast meeting was only half the story. The night before most games, Kaiser arranged clandestine orgies for half the first-team squad.
‘Kaiser was with Botafogo for five years,’ smirks Gil. ‘We won two state championships and were runners-up in the Brazilian national league in that time. And Kaiser was there throughout, a legendary guy who made everybody laugh. Director, scout, whoremonger: he was everything you could think of, except a footballer. Most of all, he was the class pimp.’
The players were usually prohibited from leaving the hotel, with security guards often stationed on the door. Kaiser respected that. He would find out on which floor they were staying and prepare a party a couple of floors below. It would start after midnight, when the management team were all fast asleep.
‘The players didn’t need to go to the theme park,’ says Kaiser. ‘I would bring it to them. We filled our boots. There are serious players like Alexandre Torres and Bebeto but all the rest played for Kaiser FC. I think KFC in the USA was named after me.’
When Kaiser is asked whether the women involved were escorts, he turns his nose up with disdain. ‘Don’t insult them,’ he says. ‘They were artists, not prostitutes.’
It became a secret part of the team’s pre-match routine. Kaiser was flown to away games a day or two ahead of the team; if any directors or management queried his presence, the players would explain that he was a natural comedian and storyteller who lightened the mood before games. ‘Kaiser had the same kit as all the players, so as far as the public were concerned he was a Botafogo player,’ says Gil. ‘He had to present himself as a footballer or he wouldn’t get anywhere.’
Gil liked having Kaiser around and did not question his presence, though he was unaware of the extent of his influence. ‘If it had got out to the press,’ says Gil, ‘it would have been a global scandal.’ Just in case any of the management team did find out, Kaiser added a layer of protection: he invited the club owner to the orgies.
Kaiser had been recommended to Botafogo by Castor de Andrade; he was great friends with the club patron Emil Pinheiro, another of Rio’s most powerful bicheiros. As Emil was in his sixties, a man with unsated primal urges, it’s likely Castor’s recommendation had more to do with off-field matters.
Emil and Kaiser got along famously, and each gave the other what they needed. ‘We knew that Kaiser arranged women for Emil but we didn’t know that he was taking backhanders in return,
’ says Gil. ‘Kaiser, the bon viveur, was receiving extra money and we weren’t.’ For the majority of his time at Botafogo, Kaiser was paid more than half the first-team squad.
The roles of pimp and babysitter do not usually go together. In Kaiser’s weird and wonderful world, however, they vied for prominence. ‘I was basically a minder,’ he says. ‘I was at clubs to take care of the players’ lives and make sure nothing bad happened to them. I was a footballer nanny.’
Kaiser was one of the first player-liaison officers and sorted anything from errands to restaurant reservations to those illicit five-a-sides at the team hotel. ‘He would do everything,’ says Bebeto, the World Cup-winning striker who was with Kaiser at Flamengo and Vasco da Gama. ‘Whatever you needed, Kaiser would say, “Hang on, hang on. I’ll sort that out for you.” It was never a bad time for Kaiser. That’s why I say he’s a good guy. He doesn’t hurt anybody and he’s got a big heart. If you have a problem and he can solve it, he will. A guy like that can’t be bad. So when he asks for something, what are you going to do? You’re going to pay him back. Those friendships are eternal.’
There were times when Kaiser was a life coach to players, like Tato at Vasco da Gama. Some of his advice would not be found in most self-help bestsellers – ‘Chapter 7: The Life-changing Magic of the Orgy’ – but it was well-meaning and invariably effective. And though Kaiser was obsessed with sex, he did encourage players to resist most vices. ‘You want to drink fifty beers and play the next day?’ he says. ‘Well done. Why not just have ten? I told them to calm it down. Nowadays there are a lot of scroungers around footballers. Useless bullshit advisers. I wasn’t a scrounger. I was somebody within football who hung out with other footballers.’
The fact that Kaiser didn’t drink made people trust him even more on nights out. He would drive them home, take the blame if they got into trouble or keep an eye on them if they were monumentally drunk. He also organised a variety of parties, from pre-match orgies at the team hotel to post-match orgies at country houses. And not just at Botafogo: Kaiser organised sex parties for the players at Vasco, Fluminense and Bangu, as well as for the directors at Ajaccio.
The players had a familiar weekend routine. They would have concentration on a Saturday night, with games scheduled for late afternoon on the Sunday. There was usually a game at the Maracanã, and Kaiser would be waiting after the match to inform the players of the plans for the evening. They would go home to change and then start a long, lost night that would often carry on past midnight. ‘The players’ party started when the final whistle went on a Sunday,’ says Kaiser, ‘and it finished when training started at 2 p.m. on Tuesday.’ As Kaiser did not have to prepare for matches, the party started even earlier. ‘My weekend,’ he says, ‘was Thursday to Tuesday.’ He didn’t like Wednesdays.
The Sunday night usually started at the trendy steakhouse Porcão, where players from all Rio clubs would sit together at an enormous table, chewing the fat about the afternoon matches. Kaiser was invariably in the middle, cheerily signing autographs for fans. Later in his career, Renato Gaúcho was sponsored by the restaurant and brazenly wore a Porcão headband during matches. He received meal vouchers which he gave away to friends, including Kaiser, who sold them on at a sizeable profit.
The players went from Porcão to one of the golden circle of nightclubs: Hippopotamus, Studio C or Caligula. When they closed, usually around five o’clock on Monday morning, Kaiser took them to a secret residence for an after-party. While that was going on, he walked round ensuring none of the guests had a camera.
With no training on Monday, the players would have an after-after-party, usually centred around a barbecue. ‘For the players,’ says the journalist Martha Esteves, ‘Monday was slut day.’ Kaiser organised that, too.
His life was not all lad larks. There was that time he went to the police station and took the blame when a Fluminense midfielder knocked somebody out in a nightclub, and even put his hand in his own pocket for the backhander that made it all go away. He also arranged for a girl to have an abortion on behalf of a famous player. ‘I’ve taken the blame so often for others’ mistakes,’ he says. ‘You have no idea. I saved the players’ asses. I did things in a way that left no trace. I took better care of others than myself.’
***
When you arrive at Estádio General Severiano, the famous old ground of Botafogo, a wall is the first thing that catches the eye. The wall, which stands opposite the stadium, doubles up as a hall-of-fame mural. There are pop-art images of all the club’s great players, from Garrincha, Nilton Santos and Didi to modern stars like Clarence Seedorf and Sebastián Abreu. Few clubs celebrate their history like Botafogo, whose place in the pantheon was secured when they provided so many players to the Brazil squads that won the country’s first World Cups in 1958 and 1962.
But in 1989, history was all Botafogo had. They were a joke, the man in the bar telling everyone he used to be a contender. They had not won the Brazilian championship or the Campeonato Carioca since 1968, a fact of which opposing fans were sadistically aware. They would slowly count up to twenty-one before chanting ‘Happy birthday to you’.
It needed the financial influence of Emil Pinheiro for Botafogo to create a bit of modern history. Sergio Américo, who covered the club for Radio Globo, will never forget the moment the resurgence began with the click of a briefcase catch. It was in 1986, shortly after Pinheiro became involved with the club.
Fernando Macaé, a coveted young midfielder who scored seventeen goals when Bangu almost won the title in 1985, posed in a Flamengo shirt after agreeing a move. He had not yet signed a contract, however, and was persuaded to have a meeting at Pinheiro’s house that night. Macaé sat around a table with Américo and Pinheiro, who placed a briefcase on the table and opened it. ‘My son,’ he said. ‘You can have all this up front if you join Botafogo.’
Américo could not take his eyes off the briefcase. ‘I have never,’ he says, ‘seen so much cash in my life.’
Macaé agonised over the decision for the next four seconds before agreeing to join Botafogo. The next day’s papers had already gone to press, announcing he was a Flamengo player, when Américo telephoned Radio Globo with the story. The show soon drifted into a two-way phone call between Macaé and the Flamengo president, during which Macaé broke down in tears and apologised. But he still went to Botafogo. It was quite a scoop for Américo – and for Botafogo. It gave Pinheiro the internal clout he needed. After Macaé signed, he effectively ran the club. Though it took a few years to reshape the team, he eventually built a side that could beat anyone. ‘Emil was an absurdly wealthy man and built a very capable team,’ says Gil. ‘A team who couldn’t afford rice started eating caviar.’
Botafogo also received a significant helping hand from Castor de Andrade. He owed Pinheiro some money and decided that sacrificing a few footballers made more sense than starting a turf war. Three excellent players – Mauro Galvão, Marinho and Paulinho Criciúma – moved from Bangu to Botafogo.
The club filled a void in his Pinheiro’s after the death of his son. The players loved him, and he spent his time at the team hotel telling them stories about fighting in the war. He was also extremely generous when it came to paying anyone, from the tea ladies to Kaiser.
‘Emil was very kind,’ says the broadcaster José Carlos Araújo. ‘He was more of a grandfather figure than a father figure. He wasn’t a high-level bicheiro like Castor, and he wasn’t volatile or short-tempered.’
He had a temperamental moral compass, though, and there were allegations of buying referees and scaring witnesses into silence. But for most, the abiding image of Pinheiro is a cuddly, eccentric little man. ‘Dr Emil was really funny,’ says Martha Esteves. ‘He was tiny and he wore a little wig that would occasionally fall out of place.’
It was not the only thing that fell out of place. Pinheiro was in his sixties, and his physical deterioration meant he was not able to assert his masculinity as he would have liked. This was just before
the emergence of Viagra, but in Brazil there was an alternative – an inflatable prosthetic penis. ‘Imagine how much that cost back then!’ says Esteves. ‘I said to him, “Dr Emil, you must be over the moon because I heard you have a new penis.” We started to joke with him, saying he had a permanent stiffy. “Can you sleep properly?” The daily chat was all about Dr Emil’s penis. You have a guy who was in charge of God knows how many bicheiros, who ran Botafogo, and instead of interviewing him about football, we’d be talking about his bionic cock!’
It was the hot topic in the dressing room as well. ‘There’s no way you couldn’t be aware of it,’ says Mauro Galvão. ‘I didn’t know how it worked. Sometimes we would get worried because it would sort of poke out.’
***
Botafogo had gone ten games without a win, the worst run anyone could remember, and Emil Pinheiro decided it was time to front up to the press. Sergio Américo had been covering the club for fourteen years and felt it was incumbent upon him to get down to brass tacks.
‘Emil Pinheiro, Botafogo haven’t won a game for months. What do you have to say about a crisis at Botafogo?’
Pinheiro drummed his fingers on the table as he considered the question. He leaned backwards in his chair and looked quizzically under the desk. Then he pulled out the desk drawers and peered inside.
‘Sergio Américo, I’ve looked in the drawer, I’ve looked in the cupboards, I’ve looked on the floor and I can’t find the Botafogo crisis that you’re talking about. You want to know something?’
Pinheiro, a stern expression on his face, maintained steady eye contact with Américo. It was at this precise moment that many of the press had a jolting reminder that, for all Pinheiro’s cuddly ways, he was still a bicheiro. And bicheiros did not take kindly to tough questioning.