by Rob Smyth
When Kaiser had to eat, he had to eat. Some of his proudest photos are taken from a dinner party at Carlos Alberto Torres’s house. Maurício, Marcelo Campello and others are also there. In one photo, everyone is smiling at the camera – except Kaiser, who is face down in his food.
Kaiser’s diets could be even more spectacular. Valtinho recalls the non-carbs phase, when Kaiser would shove ill-smelling protein shakes down his neck. Other times he would go out for dinner and just drink water, even if he wasn’t paying.
Kaiser has an alternative explanation for the youthful weight gain that his friends found so amusing. ‘Do they know that they injected corticoid in my groin because I said I had an injury, and that they fucked it up so badly that it affected my metabolism?’ he says. ‘That’s why I put on so much weight.’
***
When Renato Gaúcho went to Cruzeiro in 1992, Kaiser decided to tag along for a few weeks. They were coached by Jair Pereira, who had won everything in Brazil, as well as an Under-20 World Cup with his country and the Copa del Rey while at the Spanish giants Atlético Madrid. The list of geniuses he managed includes Júnior, Bernd Schuster, Paulo Futre and Renato Gaúcho. It’s not hard to imagine what he made of Kaiser’s first touch.
‘He was very skilful,’ says Pereira, to widespread astonishment. The first time the two met, he says, Kaiser flicked the ball up and controlled it on the back of his neck. ‘He had amazing skill. He didn’t pass through all those teams just by being charming. I got to see him train. He was in good shape. He had a good shot on him.’
CHAPTER 23
THE TV STAR
In October 1991, the Rio newspaper O Dia published a story entitled ‘The Jobless Team’. It was about Professionals United, a group of thirty-five players without a club and looking to return to elite football. They were playing a series of training matches against Rio clubs, including Vasco da Gama and Bangu. The story tells of three ‘notable recruits’ who had joined the team in the previous few days. One was Mongol, the centre-back who won the Campeonato Carioca with Botafogo in 1989. Then there was Luisinho, a former America player who also had a spell in Portugal with Filgueiras. You might recognise the third player.
‘Carlos Kayser (sic), 28 years old, started in the youth team at Botafogo … he went to Puebla where he turned professional and then ended up at Independiente in Argentina when he became Libertadores and World Champion in 1984. Now his pass belongs to Ajaccio of Corsica, in the French second division:
“‘I’m ok financially and my aim is to help the group. I’m friends with the agent, Frank Henouda, who has some dealings in the USA, and while I’m with the group I’ll be evaluating the players to find work for the ones who most impress.”’
The feature was accompanied by a big picture of the players sprawled across a kerb. The most prominent was Kaiser, sat front and centre, looking like the star of the group.
***
The longer he spent in the world of football, the more Kaiser started to understand how the media worked – and the more confident he became about manipulating it. The printed word had authority, even in such an oral culture, and whether it was true or not was largely irrelevant. ‘Once Kaiser’s lies were published once, he kept on telling them and people kept on publishing them,’ says the journalist Martha Esteves. ‘They became the truth.’
He befriended journalists, particularly those whose standards were less than rigorous, and gently persuaded them to write articles about him. Some fell for his lies; others knew he was spinning a mixture of truth and fiction, but he made it worth their while to write his story.
Life is an exchange. Kaiser offered incentives from the professional (setting up interviews with famous players, off-the-record scoops) to the personal (VIP access at nightclubs, goodness knows what else). ‘I had so much clout with the press that nobody exposed me,’ says Kaiser. ‘I kept everybody sweet, whether it was the players or journalists for the biggest newspapers. They wanted to talk with the players and I made that happen.’
The articles reinforced Kaiser’s backstory, while excluding minor details like the fact he was a centre-forward who couldn’t remember his last goal. They also contained comical flights of fancy and, most brazenly of all, those gratuitous references to his single status.
Esteves, who has covered Brazilian football for over thirty years, never wrote an article about Kaiser but can sympathise with those who did. ‘He was a storyteller and people fell for it,’ she says. ‘It might have been on a slow news day where there was some space in the newspaper. Then some player turns up saying he played in France. We didn’t have access to the kind of information we have in today’s globalised world, with Google and YouTube. It was easier to be fooled – not just journalists but fans and directors as well.
‘With some of the articles it’s obvious the journalist hasn’t verified the details. The newspapers didn’t have enough money to call places like France or Mexico. Nowadays it would be impossible for somebody to fall for his stories, even an intern. Back then journalists often didn’t have degrees and some had to work in three, four, five places. Salaries were small and life was tough.’
Despite that, Esteves does not believe there was an overt bribe for publishing articles about Kaiser. ‘I suspect they were done in exchange for a favour. Since he was such a big mouth, he could say he would introduce them to Roberto Baggio or some famous French player. I definitely don’t believe he paid them. For a start, he didn’t have any money.’
***
When Kaiser saw a teenager handing out free newspapers on Pepe Beach, he grabbed a copy and searched for details of how to contact the editorial department. He introduced himself as the former Independiente player Carlos Henrique and persuaded them to publish a Q&A: name, age, favourite food, favourite music, teams. It was accompanied by the old picture of Kaiser in his Ajaccio shirt.
A week later, again on Pepe Beach, Renato Mendes Mota was lounging around in a group that included Kaiser. ‘I wondered what he was doing,’ says Renato. ‘He called over two kids, paid them a bit of money and said, “Listen, you’re going to give away copies of this paper only to the hot girls on the beach. And as you deliver it, you’re going to point over to me. I’m going to be up here by the kiosk. Deliver the papers to the girls then point to me.” The kids delivered over a hundred copies of that newspaper on Pepe Beach.’
***
Adriano Dias Oliveira was channel-hopping one night when he froze. He did a triple take, looked back at his TV screen and it still showed his friend Kaiser. On the biggest football show in Rio.
Kaiser had talked his way onto the football show Mesa Redonda, holding court in one of the seats usually reserved for the elite of Brazilian football.
José Carlos Araújo, who co-presented the show with Washington Rodrigues, struggles to recall Kaiser’s appearance. ‘I don’t remember that character. Is there a video?’
There is a video, which has pride of place in Kaiser’s collection.
‘I’ll explain why I don’t remember,’ says Araújo. ‘These characters were often brought along by a friend or a player. There was no other way he’d get on the show. What a character! If a proposal like that came to us nowadays, we’d go on Google and investigate. Back then there wasn’t that kind of resource so we would get people recommended to us. He must have a good press agent.’
Kaiser had a great press agent: himself. His memory of how his appearance came about is slightly different. Araújo celebrated his wedding anniversary at Maxim’s nightclub, where Kaiser was the PR manager. Kaiser plied him with free champagne and then popped the question: could he come on Mesa Redonda? In his rendered state, Araújo gave Kaiser his word.
Kaiser went on Mesa Redonda looking sharp, in a blazer and pleated shirt. He presented Araújo and Rodrigues with one of his Ajaccio tops. The panel discussed the weekend’s football in the usual style before moving on to the subject of what it was like to play in France. And then – on national TV, on the biggest football show in Braz
il – Kaiser looked straight to camera and told the story of the female gift he received upon arriving at Ajaccio. As he delivered the punchline – ‘I told her, “When the pitch is flooded I shoot from behind the goal”’ – the panel collapsed in laddish hysterics.
Kaiser made a second appearance a few years later, when he was invited to nominate the Goal of the Week, the prize for which was a VW Golf. Kaiser surprised everyone by ignoring a stunning bicycle kick from Marcelinho Carioca and giving the award to Edmundo. ‘I thought Marcelinho Carioca’s goal was better,’ says Kaiser. ‘I’m not stupid. But Edmundo was a brother to me. I think it was the second car he ever owned.’
CHAPTER 24
THE DECENT SCOUNDREL
It was just another footballer lunch: Alexandre Torres and Ricardo Rocha, Brazilian internationals, and Carlos Kaiser. They had convened at a buffet, and Kaiser was determinedly overcoming a plate of chicken when a woman walked over to say hello to Torres. After a couple of minutes’ small talk she left. As soon as she was out of earshot, Kaiser asked for an introduction.
‘Come on, Kaiser. She’s my bank manager. I don’t know her well enough. I’m her customer but I’m not a friend of hers.’
‘Fine, leave it to me.’
Kaiser sidled over to the buffet, returning with another plate of chicken and a phone number.
‘How, man? That was so quick!’
‘I went over and said I was a footballer just returning from Italy and that I needed to invest all the money I’d earned abroad in her bank.’
Like all actors, much of Kaiser’s best work was unscripted and improvised. He gathered an encyclopaedia’s worth of information but rarely wrote anything down. He had a memory that would make an elephant question itself. And while some of his tall tales were pre-planned, the majority were reactions to the requirements of the moment.
‘He goes wherever the tide takes him,’ says Ricardo Rocha. ‘Back and forth. If it was fashionable to be a witch doctor he would become one. He’d do anything.’
And he does it with total conviction. ‘He would say to me, “If I don’t believe the lie I’m telling, who else is going to believe it?”’ says Renato Mendes Mota. ‘And he would usually have a comeback for any negative response.’
Most of Kaiser’s tricks would not have worked had he not been so charismatic and likeable. Everyone goes out of their way to say he was a good 171 – your friendly neighbourhood con man, who they loved for his big heart and even bigger hair. ‘Kaiser is cool in every sense of the word,’ said Carlos Alberto Torres. ‘He’s a guy that puts loyalty above all else. I don’t know of anybody who has a story showing Kaiser as untrustworthy. He charmed everybody around him.’
Kaiser’s abnormal memory allowed him to make a series of small, thoughtful gestures. If somebody arrived late to meet him, a glass of their favourite beer would be waiting. (Though it would almost certainly be on their tab.) He found out what team a person supported or what toys their child liked and gave gifts accordingly. And then there were the familiar social perks. ‘He takes you to the best places and he’s always surrounded by beautiful women,’ says Edgar Pereira. ‘Who wouldn’t want a friend like that?’
That ability to store so much detail was one of Kaiser’s greatest strengths. ‘He has an incredible memory, and he’s a very intelligent guy,’ says Alexandre Couto. ‘He gathers information then creates a story and saves it in his “natural HD”.’
The amorality of Kaiser’s behaviour did not bother most people. This was Rio, where everyone had to find their own way to survive. ‘Kaiser is a decent scoundrel,’ says Júnior Negão. ‘He was full of tricks but they were never nasty and he’s not a malevolent guy. I never heard of him doing wrong by anybody. He was just kind of dodgy in a good way. I’ve never heard anyone say they don’t like Kaiser. Everybody liked him because of his whole picaresque rascal vibe.’
Renato Gaúcho had more reason than most to dislike Kaiser, who regularly stole his identity, yet he will not hear a word against him. ‘Kaiser’s a decent 171, which is very rare in Brazil, because he never wanted to screw anybody over,’ he says. ‘That is something to be admired. And whenever he could help somebody out, he would. That’s a great quality of his. I know that if somebody hates Kaiser, it’s because that person doesn’t like themselves. They’re on the wrong planet. The whole world is wrong for that person if they don’t like Kaiser.’
What Renato doesn’t know is that Zico, his idol and friend, is among the small group who do not see the good in Kaiser’s story. ‘A 171 is a scam artist, who sells something he doesn’t have,’ says Zico. ‘They’re always bad.’ Although there is that photo of Zico with Kaiser, taken at the Brazilian team hotel before the 1986 World Cup, he does not remember him. ‘The only Kaiser I know is Beckenbauer! I think it’s sad that a person lives like that. We humans are all different. I think he’s an affront to the profession of football. No, he’s a complete liar. You can’t call that a career. How can you have a career if you didn’t play?’
***
Kaiser marketed himself at every opportunity. He was one of the first Brazilian footballers to own a mobile phone, which he used constantly at Botafogo. It was the size of a brick, and Kaiser’s use of it was about as a subtle as a brick through a window. He ostentatiously negotiated his next date or his next transfer. One morning, after training, Kaiser asked for some decorum.
‘Can you peasants shut up, please? Josep Lluís Núñez is due to call me in a second.’
A couple of players asked who he was.
‘He’s the president of Barcelona! You lot are so ignorant.’
‘Why’s he calling you?’
‘Johan Cruyff wants to sign a Brazilian to play alongside Michael Laudrup and Hristo Stoichkov.’
Right on cue, Kaiser’s phone started to ring. As he answered, the players all started hollering in mock excitement.
‘Señor Núñez, can I call you back in an hour, we have just finished training.’
Kaiser pressed a button and put the phone in his bag.
‘You lot have no class,’ he sniffed, before undressing and walking into the shower.
One player asked why Kaiser needed a shower when all he’d done was stand around all morning. Another wondered why he was speaking to the president of Barcelona in Portuguese. At this point, Nelson decided to have a rummage through Kaiser’s bag. He pulled out the phone, pressed a couple of buttons and placed it to his ear. Nothing. It was a toy phone.
Botafogo were Rio champions again in 1990 and also lost in the Brazilian championship final of 1992. Then things started to unravel. There were a number of financial scandals in Brazilian football at the time, including at Botafogo. A director was caught embezzling funds from the club, and though Emil Pinheiro was not involved – he was so wealthy that he had no need to steal from the club – he was implicated and resigned.
It got worse. Denise Frossard, a judge, sent fourteen bicheiros to prison in 1993, including Pinheiro and Castor de Andrade. When the police raided de Andrade’s accounts and computers, they found half of Rio was on his payroll – including the former president, the governor and the mayor, as well as judges, congressmen, assemblymen, twenty-five police commissioners and a hundred police officers. De Andrade died in 1997, when his funeral was openly attended by many Brazilian football greats. Pinheiro died in 2001.
When Pinheiro left Botafogo, Kaiser stopped organising orgies and found himself a new role. He fabricated the necessary certificate and started a water aerobics class at the club’s Mourisco headquarters.
It went extremely well, most of the time. Kaiser had recently started seeing a tall, blonde girl, whose ex-boyfriend arrived one day and gave Kaiser an unsolicited right-hander in front of his hydro-gym class. As he was being dragged towards the back door by a couple of heavies, the man shouted to anyone who would listen: ‘He’s a fucking 171! He shouldn’t be at Botafogo! You should fire him!’
Kaiser, surrounded by concerned pupils in dental-floss bikinis, gingerly
touched his cheekbone. ‘What was that guy’s problem?’ asked someone.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Kaiser. ‘I think he got me mixed up with someone else.’
Soon after, Kaiser persuaded a young journalist at Jornal da Zona Sul to publish a feature about his career sideline.
‘The footballer Carlos Henrique is giving hydro-gymnastic classes and presenting a sports show Real Strong while waiting for the French club Ajaccio to formally release him … The player has one foot abroad and one in Brazil. Kayzer [sic] was selected to play in Arabia, but the negotiations have stalled. The player has tried several times to get in touch with the French club but they haven’t responded.
‘“If I go to Arabia now it would just be running away because loving somebody so much has made football trickier for me and now I couldn’t do that,” stated the Ajaccio legend, who is going through an emotionally difficult period. If the player doesn’t go to Arabia, he will stay in Brazil as a football agent.’
CHAPTER 25
THE KING OF BEERS
When the 1994 World Cup was awarded to the USA, the average American knew very little about football. This was a situation Kaiser was only too happy to exploit. The beer company Budweiser wanted to film an advert in Brazil, which anyone with even a passing knowledge of the game knew was the home of football. Their marketing team contacted Fluminense and were eventually put in touch with the club’s fitness coach, Kaiser’s old friend Marcelo Campello.
They asked if he could arrange a group of players for the advert and stressed one caveat: they needed to be photogenic. If there was one person who knew how to look the part, it was Kaiser. Everyone was paid $1,000, whether they appeared in the advert or not, which was sufficient incentive for Kaiser. ‘They must have paid him bloody well to get up so early every day,’ says Joel Santana, the coach, who was hired as a consultant and coordinator. Kaiser may have been teetotal, but he had a certain moral flexibility when it came to promoting alcohol. Besides, who better to appear in an advert for the King of Beers than a man named Kaiser?