Kaiser

by Rob Smyth

  The advert involved long days, from dawn till beyond dusk, and Kaiser filled much of the time by chatting up the director. ‘He must have spoken English really well because she couldn’t speak Portuguese,’ says Santana. ‘Or he was talking in a different dialect. He ended up showing her around Rio. They got very well acquainted. I think a romance could well have happened there. I can’t confirm it but I know they were very close.’

  While Kaiser may have been photogenic, he proved to be unusually camera-shy. His desperation to avoid the ball was such that he was almost always out of shot. One part of the advert required a player to leap triumphantly and head the ball. Even Kaiser could manage that. As he did so, his mullet wafted imperiously across his face. He could have been in a shampoo advert. It was the only thing of note that anyone saw Kaiser do throughout filming – and it ended up in a commercial that was watched by millions across America during the World Cup.

  When he is reminded of the advert, the star striker Bebeto bursts out laughing. ‘Bloody hell!’ he says. ‘I remember that. And they put him in the advert! That’s what I’m saying: if you let that lad open his mouth, it’s over. People who didn’t know him thought he was an idol. Man, they actually chose Kaiser. Unbelievable.’

  ***

  Brazil started the 1994 World Cup being criticised for their style of play and ended it the same way – even though they won the competition. The coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, like Sebastião Lazaroni in 1990, placed a greater emphasis on defence, with a back four and two holding midfielders in Dunga and Mauro Silva. All he wanted to do was end a twenty-four-year wait for the World Cup – still Brazil’s longest drought since their first victory in 1958. Brazil were dangerously dependent on the attacking brilliance of their strikers, Romário and Bebeto. ‘We had a nice team and a great spirit,’ says the defender Ricardo Rocha, ‘but without those two we wouldn’t have won the World Cup.’

  ‘It was the best partnership I had in football,’ says Bebeto. ‘A gift from God. I think it was one of the best in Brazilian football history. Everybody knows the story of Bebeto and Romário. I had the pleasure of playing with him.’

  A number of the team, including Romário and Bebeto, had been part of the 1990 squad that was savaged after losing to Argentina in the second round. ‘We stuck together really tightly because of the hurt of 1990,’ says Ricardo Rocha. ‘You learn a lot more in life through losing than winning. We were written off in 1994 but the group was very unified and tough, which was crucial in winning that World Cup.’

  The tournament started six weeks after the death of the Formula 1 genius Ayrton Senna, which had a devastating impact on the morale of the country. ‘The public really needed something to cheer about,’ says Bebeto. ‘Brazilian people have to go through a lot. They’re really resilient, hard-working people. We wanted to bring joy to them. Everybody put their egos aside. When the president came to talk about money we said to him, “We don’t care how much you are going to pay us, what matters to us is winning this tournament.” That was a really important moment. We had a shared purpose. I shared a room with Zinho, and we’d say to each other, “Let’s do this, man!”’

  Brazil rarely hit the attacking heights, despite the obvious brilliance of Romário and Bebeto, and scored only five goals in the four knockout games. The first of those was a tough 1-0 win over the hosts, on Independence Day. ‘It was the fourth of July,’ says Ricardo Rocha, ‘it was fifty degrees – and then we had ten men.’ Leonardo, the mild-mannered, urbane left-back, was sent off for a vicious elbow that fractured the skull of the American Tab Ramos. ‘Leonardo was never violent,’ says Ricardo Rocha. ‘He was a really technical player. The image is horrible but he was trying to shake him off with an elbow to the ribs, not the face.’

  Brazil then beat Holland 3-2 in the quarter-finals, a minor classic that included the first demonstration of Bebeto’s iconic baby-rocking celebration, and was eventually settled by a ferocious free-kick from Kaiser’s friend Branco. They then crept past Sweden 1-0 in the semi-finals thanks to a late goal from the inevitable Romário. He was so keen to win the competition that he broke the habit of a lifetime and trained vigorously the day before the final – so much so that he felt severe muscular pain and almost missed the match.

  The final against Italy was a poor game, a weary 0-0 draw. It was the first World Cup final to go to penalties. The most memorable moment came in extra-time: a solo run of bewildering brilliance by the substitute Viola, who beat six players before setting up Romário for a shot that was desperately blocked. Few people outside Brazilian football had heard of him before the match; nor would they hear about him again. It was another reminder of the extraordinary depth of talent in Brazilian football.

  Brazil won the penalty competition 4-2, with Roberto Baggio famously missing the final kick. It was a bittersweet experience for Kaiser. A few months earlier he was at Caligula when he met an Italian tourist called Marina. She was a Buddhist, a culture that had always interested Kaiser; and a cousin of the Italian legend Baggio, which definitely interested Kaiser. The similarities between Italian and Corsican allowed Marina and Kaiser to communicate easily, and their holiday romance was such that she asked him to go back to Europe with her. Kaiser did not want to leave Rio permanently but did spend time in Turin, where he met Baggio and started to discover more about Buddhism. When he returned to Rio, Kaiser decided to embrace the culture fully.

  ‘It was difficult for me to see him miss, even though my country became world champions,’ says Kaiser. ‘For any Buddhist to see somebody who lives their life being kind to their neighbour being condemned by a nation because they missed a penalty. He didn’t deserve that. He aged really fast. If you look at Baggio, he went grey very early. I put myself in his shoes and felt his suffering.’

  The victory was cathartic for a team that had been the subject of criticism from their own media in particular. When the captain Dunga lifted the trophy, he shouted ‘This is for you, you treacherous bastards! What do you say now?’

  The criticism of Brazil’s style – before, during and after the tournament – came mainly from the press. ‘I don’t think it was a great team,’ says Martha Esteves. ‘But we won. Even if it was on penalties, we won. Brazilian supporters like victory. I remember the 1982 and 1986 teams with a lot more passion, but most Brazilian supporters prefer to remember the 1994 squad, because although they played ugly, they won.’

  Even more importantly, they won for the first time since 1970. ‘The public were a little impatient so that restored peace to Brazilian football,’ says Ricardo Rocha. ‘It had been a long time. Brazilians ended up admiring that discredited national team who clawed their way back after 1990. After so long without a World Cup, Brazilian football unburdened itself.’

  As in 1990, the players couldn’t walk the streets when they returned from the World Cup. This time, it was for the right reasons. ‘When we returned it was so moving,’ says Bebeto. ‘The first place we came back to was Recife. The image of when we passed Boa Viagem Beach will never leave me. Our plane had the Brazilian colours on it. Everybody was on the beach and I was at the window seat. Then I saw the crowd. That’s priceless. I’m getting goosebumps now. It was so joyful. It’s hard to grasp the scale of it.’

  Though the criticism of the team’s style was fair enough – they were Brazil in name rather than nature – they did not receive enough credit for the authority of their World Cup win. They were easily the best team in the tournament and played with a formidable certainty. You always felt they were in control: even when they went down to ten men in the first half against the USA, even when Holland came back from 2-0 down to equalise in the quarter-final, even when the final against Italy went to the supposed lottery of penalties. Few World Cup winners have had such an obvious sense of destiny.

  ***

  The World Cup confirmed Romário as one of the greatest goalscorers in football history. At 5ft 5ins he benefited from a lack of size: he had a sprinter’s ability to explode from a stan
ding start and the capacity to change direction in tight areas. ‘He was the best striker I played against,’ says Ricardo Rocha. ‘I’ve never seen another player like him. Johan Cruyff said he was the king of the penalty box.’ Romário was indecently cool in front of goal and has a strong case for being the greatest one-on-one finisher of all time. He’s certainly the one with the greatest flair, imagination and arrogance.

  Some people think a one-on-one is about scoring or saving a goal. For Romário, the one-on-one was a power game, a masculinity-waving contest. It was also a fascinating puzzle, and he found some ingenious ways – little Brazilian ways – to score. He could scoop, lob or chip. He could toe-poke it in. He could nutmeg the keeper. His favourite trick was to dance cockily, effortlessly round the keeper; sometimes he would do that and then do it again. Romário loved humiliating goalkeepers, the favelado showing everyone who was boss.

  When Romário lived on the top floor of a posh condominium in Barra, he regularly held all-night parties to the exasperation of his neighbours. Every clockwise twist of the volume dial was designed to say: I’m a favelado, and I live here now, what are you going to do about it? ‘The more prejudice there was against him, the more he would do it,’ says Martha Esteves. ‘It was the same on the pitch.’

  He was an irresistible ball of charisma who said and did what he wanted. When he was asked by a magazine to give some life tips, the list included:

  ‘Find a prick to slag you off and motivate yourself with this challenge.’

  ‘Dream like fuck.’

  ‘Shag every day, three times at the most.’

  Romário was a poster boy for unprofessionalism – he loved nightclubs and felt he played better if he had been out the night before a match, although he was at least teetotal. ‘I don’t smoke,’ he said once. ‘I don’t drink, I don’t use drugs, but women …’

  The TV presenter Washington Rodrigues says Romário’s penis was known as ‘the lethal weapon’. He got to know him well, especially when he unexpectedly became Flamengo manager in 1995. ‘Romário is an amazing character, but you have to understand the man. He would go to bed at 7 p.m., wake up at 1 a.m. and have nothing to do, so he’d go to a nightclub. Barring Pelé, who is immortal, Romário was the best Brazilian attacker I’ve seen. Of the mortals, it’s Romário without a doubt. He wasn’t tall or athletic, he didn’t like training. But he loved playing. Romário knew all the shortcuts. He was so good at finding space.’

  Like so many of his generation, Romário lived fast and, in football terms, died old. He played until he was forty-three. His lifestyle didn’t do him too much harm.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE SUIT

  During the World Cup, Kaiser finally negotiated a permanent departure from Ajaccio. He hadn’t actually been to Corsica for years but was thrilled to cut the last bit of red tape. The day before the World Cup final, Ajaccio renamed the Stade Mezzavia. It would now be called Stade Ange Casanova, in memory of a former director of the club. When he saw the name Casanova, Kaiser assumed it was a tribute to him.

  He was even prouder when he saw his name in Jornal dos Sports, the highbrow Rio newspaper. ‘The headline is there for anyone who wants to see it,’ he says. ‘“BANGU HAS ITS KING.” Who’s that, Zizinho? Joe Bloggs? No, Carlos Kaiser.’

  Brazil’s victory at the World Cup replenished Kaiser’s enthusiasm for impersonating a footballer, and he returned to Bangu after leaving Ajaccio. He signed a three-month contract which, by coincidence, was officially witnessed by Mario Barros, the brother of his old Ajaccio team-mate Fabinho.

  When Carlos Alberto Torres read about Kaiser in Jornal dos Sports, it made his day. ‘I was genuinely shocked when I read it,’ he says. ‘But it’s that thing of being shocked but also rooting for it to be true and for him to be happy.’

  The Jornal dos Sports article, searching for a synonym of ‘journeyman’ to describe Kaiser’s career, called him a ‘gypsy highness’. With the volume of football coverage starting to increase, there was even more opportunity for Kaiser to get his name in print.

  ***

  Kaiser occasionally joined in training while at Bangu, where the lower standard was more to his taste, but did not play a game. When his contract expired, the tide took him to America, the small club at which he had a spell in the mid-eighties. This time there was no pretence of football-related activity. He asked his friend Valtinho to arrange a meeting with the coach Luisinho. ‘I’m not going to play,’ said Kaiser to Valtinho. ‘I’m going to be on the books so I can operate in the environment I’m familiar with. Playing would be difficult.’

  Luisinho was an America legend, the leading goalscorer in the club’s history with 311. He had a slight doubt as to whether Kaiser was good enough to play for the club.

  ‘Come on, Valtinho, Kaiser’s shite. How am I going to get him to play here?’

  ‘He doesn’t want to play – he just wants to be around the club and sort some sponsorship. Trust me, he is a genius at that kind of thing.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do. But he’s not playing.’

  Luisinho arranged for Kaiser to meet the club president, Francisco Cantizano, on a Thursday afternoon. What he knew – and Kaiser didn’t – was that Cantizano saw nobody on Thursdays. The day was reserved for members’ parties and a lunch so long that it doubled up as dinner.

  The next morning, Kaiser breezed into training and said hello to Luisinho.

  ‘Kaiser, can you wait until you’ve spoken to the president before you come to training?’

  ‘Oh, that’s okay, I saw him yesterday – he signed my contract.’

  Kaiser produced his new America contract, lest there be any doubt. Valtinho says he still has no idea how Kaiser did it. But he fulfilled his promise of sponsorship, setting up a major deal with a brand called Waterproof. They supplied all the players with watches, caps, towels, beach bats and other surfing gear. You didn’t necessarily have to be at America to benefit, either. He got Maurício, an Internacional player at the time, a sponsorship with Waterproof and a supermarket sweep at Cantão.

  ‘I was allowed to go in the shop and take whatever I liked so long as I wore it in interviews,’ says Maurício. ‘Kaiser was a pioneer of product placement within football. It’s normal these days. He had that perceptiveness years back.’

  Kaiser also sorted out unofficial sponsorships at various restaurants for the players. In return, he was allowed to sit on the bench for each game, in his full kit, to all intents and purposes just another footballer.

  In some ways this was Kaiser’s imperial phase, when he discovered weird and wonderful ways to appear in newspapers. In 1995, he took on the might of Greenpeace – and trounced them. A group of seventeen activists had chained themselves to the entrance of the French consulate in a protest against nuclear testing. The initial reaction of the security guard was to point a gun at all of them, until he was made aware of the concept of the peaceful protest.

  The ensuing standoff meant nobody was able to receive travel visas, no matter how urgent. As word spread of the protest, Kaiser sensed another opportunity to get himself in the news. He decided he had not left Ajaccio after all and swanned over to the consulate to renew his imaginary visa. What happened next was told in a local newspaper the next day:

  ‘The consulate decided to keep the doors closed and the deadlock remained until the arrival of a strapping gentleman in sunglasses, cap and dungarees, who was unhappy at the controlled irritation of the customs brokers. He quickly assessed the situation and said, “Let’s get these guys out of the way”. Immediately the group went on the attack and a protest that had lasted five hours was dispersed in five minutes. “I have to travel today and I can’t tolerate this nonsense,” stated the man in question – Carlos Kaiser, Carioca, 32 years, ex-Vasco, ex-Bangu and current player for Ajaccio, who play in the French second division.’

  A few weeks later, Kaiser was in the news again.

  ‘After playing for several teams in Rio, among them Vasco, Botafogo
, Bangu and America, and playing abroad, the centre-forward and right midfielder Carlos Henrique Kayzer is temporarily going from the football pitch to the Muay Thai ring. Ready for success in martial arts, on 27th July in the Comary Club in Teresopolis, Carlos will challenge the reigning Brazilian middle weight (79 to 85kg) champion through the amateur Thai boxing association – Naja – whose president and world light middle weight champion, Wellington Narany, is his trainer.

  ‘Being contractually beholden to Ajaccio, a French second division club, the player has been training for four months to compete for his first title since he became a black belt in Muay Thai, having been a student of professor Alesandro, in Ibeas Top Club.

  ‘He guarantees however that, even winning the Brazilian title and going on to other victories, he has no intention of abandoning the green grass of football and he’s even hoping to settle a contract with a club in order to play in the Brazilian Championship. Last year, Carlinhos played for America, then managed by Luisinho, vying for a place with Andre Luiz.’

  Never mind Muay Thai: Kaiser was a black belt in bare-faced lying.

  CHAPTER 27

  THE KING OF RIO

  By January 1995, Romário was the best player in the world. He had just won the Fifa Player of the Year award, getting more votes than everyone else combined, and would have claimed the Ballon d’Or had he been eligible. (It was not until the following year that non-European players could win the award.) L’Equipe, the celebrated French newspaper, even gave him their all-sport Champion of Champions award for 1994, an honour won previously by, among others, Carl Lewis, Ayrton Senna and Michael Jordan.

  It was, all things considered, a major story when he decided he wanted to leave Barcelona and join Flamengo. At a time when almost everybody else was going in the opposite direction, it gave Brazilian domestic football – and especially Rio football – a huge boost. It also sparked one of the most famous seasons in the history of the Campeonato Carioca: the battle to determine the King of Rio. When people bemoan the lack of glamour and personality in the modern domestic game, it is years such as 1995 that they have in mind.