by Rob Smyth
‘It’s harder for Brazilian players to adapt in Asia. But there’s a chance to learn a new culture. I know that isn’t important for most footballers but it is for me. I’ve always been interested in Japan: the serenity, discipline and respect they have in their culture really appeals to a Buddhist like me.’
Kaiser instructed his agent to go ahead with the move to Japan, and went off into the night with a girl who now thought he was a football superstar.
***
With the 1998 World Cup approaching, Brazil were looking formidable. They were beginning to demonstrate an attacking flair worthy of the 1980s team, particularly with the exhilarating strike partnership of Ronaldo and Romário (‘RoRo’, as it became known). The world did not get to see RoRo in France. Romário suffered a muscular injury and was eventually omitted from the World Cup squad by Mário Zagallo. It was a bitter blow, and he was in tears at a press conference. He was then sued by both Zagallo and Zico, his No. 2, after putting unflattering caricatures of them on the toilet doors of his bar, Café de Gol.
It is one of the bigger what-ifs in football history: two decades on, the thought of Romário and peak Ronaldo together in France still rouses the hairs on the back of the neck. In the short time they were together they left defenders at their wits’ end, their brains melting with the demands of concentrating against them for ninety minutes. England’s Gary Neville, who played in the centre of defence against Brazil during Le Tournoi in 1997, recalled Ronaldo and Romário laughing their heads off at a joke while play was going on at the other end and England’s defenders were gulping oxygen.
Ronaldo, a non-playing member of the 1994 World Cup-winning squad, had emerged as the most exciting player in the world. He was possibly the greatest young footballer of all time, an awesome blend of skill, speed and power. He was faster with the ball than most people were without it. ‘Ronaldo could start from the halfway line and the whole stadium would ignite,’ said Sir Bobby Robson, his manager at Barcelona. ‘A current would course through the stands.’
That was because Ronaldo played like a winger – but he did so in the centre of the pitch, which made him infinitely more dangerous. He played like every attack had a ten-second deadline and was like a bulldozer that could go at 90mph.
That Barcelona team is seen as one of the great coaching seminars, with Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique and Laurent Blanc on the pitch and José Mourinho on the bench. Ronaldo did not bother with all that theory. At his best he was the antonym of tiki-taka: he just ran through everything and scored a goal.
Kaiser is occasionally compared to Ronaldo – and this time he’s not the one making the comparison. ‘Brazil is actually a privileged country,’ says the Ajaccio attacker Fabinho. ‘We have two phenomena. One on the pitch called Ronaldo, a No. 9 who did unbelievable things. And off the pitch, Carlos Kaiser, the phenomenon who did things nobody else in the world could do.’
***
When Romário was left out, Bebeto came into the starting XI, with Edmundo on the bench. They also had the emerging Rivaldo, the stepover-loving Denilson – the world’s most expensive player, who had joined Real Betis from São Paulo for £21.5 million – and Leonardo.
The Nike advert for the 1998 World Cup is one of football’s famous promos, with the players running through an airport demonstrating all kinds of impossible ball skills. Not even Kaiser could gate-crash that one.
Brazil strutted through the tournament, with Ronaldo close to unstoppable at times. They lost their final group game, a dead rubber against Norway, and lived on the edge defensively, but they always seemed to have enough attacking talent to get them out of trouble – in the knockout stages they beat Chile 4-1, Denmark 3-2 and Holland on penalties in the semi-finals after an immense 1-1 draw.
The holders France had struggled to reach the final, heavily dependent on their peerless defence both for clean sheets and goals. Brazil were favourites for the final. We all know what happened next. Well, partially. Ronaldo was taken to hospital and excluded from the XI before being reinstated, and a distracted Brazil were hammered 3-0 by France. Bixente Lizarazu, the France left-back, called it their easiest game of a tournament in which they played South Africa and Saudi Arabia.
The official and most credible story is that Ronaldo had a convulsion on the afternoon of the game, something that had never happened before or since; he was unconscious for a few minutes before being taken to hospital, where he felt normal and decided to go to the ground. After a heated dressing-room argument, Zagallo put him back in the team. There were strong suggestions that Nike’s influence had crossed the line, and that they demanded Ronaldo be included. The case even went to court, though that proved to be a waste of everyone’s time. We will probably never know the full truth.
CHAPTER 28
THE FORMER FOOTBALLER
Búzios, the idyllic resort in the south-east of Rio de Janeiro, is Kaiser’s favourite place on earth. ‘A beautiful place for beautiful people,’ he says, matter-of-factly including himself in such company. Some of the greatest parties of Kaiser’s life were in Búzios – particularly around Christmas and New Year, when the domestic footballers were on their break and a number of foreign-based players also returned home.
‘Nightlife in Búzios starts at 1 a.m. and ends at midday,’ says Kaiser. ‘If you’re famous, people leave you in peace. Nobody mobs you like in Rio de Janeiro. I used to come here when I was on my Christmas break from Ajaccio.’
The players spent the daytime lazing at the beach, playing footvolley, drinking cold beer and chatting to local admirers. One day Kaiser went off on his own, jogging up and down the main beach wearing only a cap, sunglasses and exquisitely tight orange shorts. Nobody knew what he was up to – until the early hours of the following morning, when they were talking to a group of women.
‘Did I see you jogging along the beach today? You had orange shorts on?’
‘Yeah, I’m on my winter break from Real Madrid – I need to keep in shape as we have some really important fixtures in January. Have you ever been to Madrid, by the way?’
Kaiser came to Búzios with some of the superstars of Brazilian football: Renato Gaúcho, Gonçalves, Gaúcho, Carlos Alberto Torres, Branco, Tato and the rest. A match against a Búzios XI became an annual tradition. ‘It was the biggest game of the year for them,’ says Kaiser. ‘They’d be cooped up and we’d be going out to a nightclub until midday when the game was at 2 p.m. Imagine if we’d lost the game. We had over fifty women watching the game against the best in Búzios. You’d think we’d lose a game like that?’
The agent Frankie Henouda owned the elite Le Club, the trendiest nightclub in Búzios, and Kaiser became the manager. Each night he strutted around flaunting his status, deciding who could and could not enter the club. ‘Le Club was a place of fun and happiness, flirting, hooking up, sex,’ says Kaiser. ‘There was a strategic exit and a private area where they did their sexual business. All the celebrities did that rather than go back to wherever they were staying. It was the most natural thing in the world. Nowadays the cool nightclub is Privilégio. The ones who ran the show back then were me, Renato and Gaúcho. Now Romário rules the roost because Privilégio is the main nightclub in Juiz de Fora and he’s a king there. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.’
Renato Gaúcho also had a spectacular holiday home in Búzios, where he would host New Year’s Eve parties. Each year Renato had a special T-shirt printed, which doubled up as a stamp that allowed entry. Kaiser diligently went round getting rid of the gatecrashers and imposters.
***
Renato Mendes Mota was woken by the sound of somebody thumping an adjoining wall. It was 5 a.m. and he was staying in a rented villa in Búzios with a group of friends including Kaiser. It soon became apparent that the thumping was an accompaniment to Kaiser having sex, and that he had woken everyone else up as well. The next day, one of the group announced he was going home because he had barely slept a wink. ‘No worries,’ said Kaiser. ‘But could yo
u leave your blender? I need to make my protein shakes and you promised I could use it all week.’
***
If Búzios was Kaiser’s favourite place to visit, then the Rio Sul shopping mall was still his day-to-day residence. One afternoon in 2001, while recovering from an eye operation that left him struggling to see much beyond the end of his nose, he was chatting with Valtinho and some other players. It was not just any old afternoon: there was a scheduled appearance by Ivete Sangalo, a twenty-nine-year-old pop singer whose debut solo album had recently gone platinum. Kaiser, hearing all the noise, assumed the commotion was because of all the footballers in the mall.
He started chatting to Sangalo, oblivious to who she was. For the next ten minutes, Kaiser explained to one of Brazil’s biggest superstars that it was a nightmare being famous. When you played for Manchester United, he said, it was hard to get much peace and quiet.
He may not have been able to see but Kaiser could still talk, and he somehow charmed Sangalo enough that she agreed to go on a date. He took her to Toro, where he had one of his sponsorships, and was still unaware that he was in the company of one of the most famous people in Brazil. Kaiser talked so much at Rio Sul that he had not even asked her what she did for a living. When they were in Toro, Kaiser, noticing that everyone was staring at their table, repeatedly apologised for the lack of privacy. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what I have to put up with every day.’ There was no second date.
Most of Kaiser’s short-term relationships ended amicably enough. There were a couple of notable exceptions. Once he dated two sisters simultaneously, using money from one to buy presents for the other. It lasted a few months before unravelling. ‘They both went to his apartment to have a go at him,’ says Renato Mendes Mota. ‘It was complete chaos.’
In 2001, Kaiser was dating a woman who regularly chauffeured him around Rio and paid for dinner. When Kaiser broke up with her, she went to the police and complained that he was a 171. Nothing came of that, so the woman cast a black magic spell on him instead. Kaiser brusquely informed her that the aforementioned Pai Santana, one of Rio’s most famous black magic priests, had already tried and failed to do that at Vasco da Gama.
Back in the real world of football, a career-threatening knee injury kept Ronaldo out for most of the four years between the 1998 and 2002 World Cups. He returned just before the tournament in Japan and Korea, which Brazil won in style. They were easily the best team in a poor competition, with Ronaldo finding redemption by scoring both goals in a 2-0 win over Germany in the final. He scored eight goals in the tournament, the most in a single World Cup since 1970, and formed a devastating attack with Rivaldo and Ronaldinho. After that, however, the fantasy again drained out of Brazilian football. They were knocked out in the quarter-finals in 2006 and 2010, and then there was 2014.
Brazil’s 7-1 defeat to Germany in the semi-final of that World Cup might be the most staggering result in the history of football. It was particularly twisted that, after twenty-five years of focusing largely on a more defensive game, Brazil then haemorrhaged goals during their own World Cup semi-final. It was as if somebody up there was punishing them for messing with the natural order.
Brazil still produce players of attacking genius like Neymar and Roberto Firmino, but there aren’t so many to go around. And in a post-Dunga world, Brazil are arguably best known for producing defensive midfielders. Think of any elite European club, and the likelihood is they will have had a Brazilian holding player in the last decade.
There is an eternal debate about the balance between skill and strength. ‘Youth coaching in Brazil focuses too much on athleticism and gym work,’ says Alexandre Couto. He highlights Hulk, the huge forward who played in the 2014 World Cup. ‘What the fuck is Hulk? He’s a UFC fighter.’
It’s a recurring theme. ‘In the 1980s Maradona said something that’s stuck with me,’ says Washington Rodrigues. ‘He said, “You can find a great player under every rock in Brazil.” Nowadays when you lift up a rock there are just bugs. There isn’t the same kind of regeneration. All this modernity and urbanisation has had an impact. When I was a young boy in Rio there were at least twelve pitches near my house. Great players are made on the earth and the sand, playing barefoot. You don’t have that anymore. We produce human machines that can play consistently well for ninety minutes. Skill is a bonus. A lot of kids these days don’t even bother. They are great video-game players but on the pitch they’re useless.’
The reaction to the Germany humiliation, and the appointment of Tite as coach, helped Brazil rediscover some of their football identity. ‘It will never be as free, light and happy as it was because football has changed,’ says Martha Esteves, ‘but I think it’s coming back with people like Neymar.’
Neymar is the only Brazilian to come anywhere near winning the Ballon d’Or in the last decade, when he finished third in 2015. From 1997 to 2007 the award went to a Brazilian player on five occasions: Ronaldo twice, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Kaká. Since then, nothing.
When Neymar moved to Paris-Saint Germain in 2017, his wages rose to €37 million per year. ‘Football is big business these days,’ says Edgar Pereira. ‘It’s much more professional. And it was 7-1 to Germany.’
***
As his football career wound down, Kaiser started to pursue an alternative profession. He became a fitness trainer and found he was actually good at it. With that and his unofficial work as a promoter, he was forced to come to a sad decision. In July 2003, on his fortieth birthday, Kaiser phoned a couple of local newspapers to announce his retirement. The news didn’t quite stop the press. As he hung up his unblemished boots, Kaiser reflected on a career with so many stories, so many highs and lows, and a perfect record: 0 games, 0 goals. ‘Footballers die twice,’ he says. ‘When we stop playing and then when we actually die. I’ve lost one life already.’
His second life gathered momentum a year later when the journalist Renato Maurício Prado wrote about him in the newspaper O Globo. Prado told the story of how Kaiser hoodwinked Castor de Andrade by fighting with the fans at Bangu, and how he had built a career as a footballer without kicking a ball.
‘A good journalist is a storyteller,’ says Prado. ‘And if they know how to make it clear that the story is kind of a myth, that’s fine. Kaiser’s story is a mythical story, and that’s why I put it in the column. We, the press, will fall for anything people tell us. Do you believe that Túlio Maravilha scored a thousand goals? It’s one of the biggest lies in world football and we believed it. We’re always looking for a big story. Kaiser must have played with Túlio Maravilha. Half of Túlio’s thousand goals probably came from assists by Kaiser.
‘If you look at the funny side of it, Kaiser’s story is amazing. He did a lot better than he should have done in life, thanks to fraud. He’s a legendary character in football. I don’t think he’s done anything evil. I wouldn’t arrest Kaiser. I wouldn’t sentence Kaiser. On the contrary. I think he’s become a source of great amusement.’
It’s hard to imagine Kaiser’s story happening again. Globalisation, technology, professionalism and a greater circulation of information would make it impossible for somebody to talk their way into so many clubs. ‘He impersonated a footballer for over twenty years,’ says Renato Gaúcho. ‘Nobody will ever come close to him. They wouldn’t have the slightest chance. Our Kaiser always has and always will be unique. He is the greatest footballer never to play football.’
He was also the greatest lover never to fall in love. And then something extraordinary happened.
CHAPTER 29
THE HUSBAND
Kaiser always boasted that no woman could penetrate his heart. But when he met Marcella Mendes, a former ballerina and model, at his gym, he felt something he didn’t understand. It was mutual. ‘She was like an obsession,’ says Kaiser. ‘We were both in a relationship but she dropped everything and so did I.’
They had only been together a few months when Kaiser asked Marcella to marry him. He had never been so sure
of anything in his life. When she said yes, the two could not wait and went straight to a registry office. ‘She was beautiful, hot, wonderful, coveted by many men,’ says Renato Gaúcho. ‘And who married her? Carlos Kaiser. Explain that to me. He was broke and he married Marcella. It’s his charisma.’
Kaiser became a different person; not really Kaiser at all. He disappeared from the old social circles and spent the next few years hosting dinner parties at the marital flat in Leme, where he lived next door to Romário. One of the regular visitors was Valtinho, Kaiser’s friend from America, and his wife. ‘Marcella was delicate, elegant, intelligent and polite,’ says Valtinho. ‘She was a really strong person and a really good influence on Kaiser.’
Marcella was bright and effervescent; a gentle soul who made Kaiser see the world through different eyes. He started to enjoy simple pleasures like cooking, watching films and telling the truth. He spent a lot more time at the gym and started a sports science course.
‘She organised his life and gave him a feeling of family he’d never really had,’ says Valtinho. ‘They had a lovely apartment in Leme. And then all of a sudden she died.’
Marcella died of brain ischemia, a condition in which there is insufficient blood flow to the brain. It had a devastating impact on Kaiser: Valtinho uses the phrase ‘perdeu chão’, which literally means to lose the floor beneath you.
‘We didn’t even get to say goodbye,’ says Kaiser. ‘That was the biggest shock of my life, and the biggest loss. Nothing will ever come close. I’d do anything to have her back. If happiness exists, I was happy when I was with her. I forgot my past.
‘I never cheated on my wife. Seriously, never. I wouldn’t have cheated on her for a fivesome. On the day we got married she said, “I’m afraid of losing you, of you leaving me.” I was never going to leave that woman. I wanted to grow old with her.’
Whether through fatalism, desperation or fear, Kaiser slowly returned to his old ways. Except now he was a man in his forties, with all the inherent physical and psychological limitations, and one who was nowhere near getting over the death of his wife. ‘I internalised all the grief,’ he says. ‘My life went properly off the rails. I lost all sense of right and wrong.’