Kaiser
Page 22
How often he did so is also open to debate. ‘He says he’s slept with over a thousand women,’ smiles Ricardo Rocha. ‘That’s a fantasy of his, to be like Renato. He’s got the gift of the gab. If it doesn’t work, that’s fine. He’s like a fisherman: he throws his net out, waits for a couple of hours and if a little fish swims in, he reels it in. But a thousand fish? I’m not having that.’
There are others who think 1,000 is a conservative estimate. The truth is out there somewhere, but nobody knows where to find it.
***
The most gut-wrenching part of Kaiser’s story, the death of Marcella Mendes, is confirmed by everyone – even Dror Niv, who questions everything that comes out of Kaiser’s mouth. ‘I’m not certain she was his wife,’ he says, ‘but they were definitely together and she did die.’
He is less convinced about the fate of Kaiser’s son. ‘I don’t think his son existed,’ he says. ‘That’s why he had to die.’ Others think Kaiser has no contact with him, and so his son – like the other two fiancées Kaiser mentioned – is dead in a metaphorical sense. ‘You can never tell if it’s true or not,’ says Alexandre Couto. ‘We never know whether to laugh or cry!’
Alexandre also has a theory about Kaiser’s backstory; that he says he was stolen in Porto Alegre so that he could claim he was a Gaúcho who became a Carioca – just like Renato Gaúcho.
***
And then there’s Ajaccio. Kaiser will acknowledge all his football-related lies, but on this he does not give an inch. He says Fabinho is lying and Alexandre Couto tells the truth. And Alexandre Couto did support Kaiser’s version – but only the first time he was interviewed.
‘He thinks he was there, that he played and everything,’ says Fabinho. ‘But there’s no concrete proof. It would be good to ask him, “Show me a photo of you and somebody else on the Ajaccio pitch”, or “Show me a photo of you training with the Ajaccio players”. There isn’t one. If you call the club and ask if there was a Brazilian called Fabio Barros from 1986 to 1991 they will confirm that I was there. I’m solid proof. Alexandre Couto was there, too. He was actually referred by me.’
Many of Kaiser’s friends think he has played a game of Chinese whispers for so long that he has somehow brainwashed himself to the point where he no longer knows what is true and what is not. ‘A lot of things he would actually believe as if they happened,’ says Gustavo. ‘You could put him under bright lights and interrogate him and he would go the distance. And he won’t stray from what he says. If you can get away with it, why not? And he got away with it!’
If Kaiser doesn’t know what did or did not happen, everybody else has no chance.
***
Two of the things that make Kaiser’s story so slippery are his propensity to answer a different question from the one that has been asked, and the absence of a firm timeline. ‘Living in the past is for history teachers,’ he says. On one occasion, after being nagged once too often, he barked, ‘I’m not a talking calendar!’ Yet he can recite the telephone number of a Búzios hotel he stayed in twenty years ago.
‘Don’t ask me, “What about this game?”’ says Kaiser. ‘For fuck’s sake. I stopped playing in 2003, and I’m going to speak about a certain game? That’s tricky. “Oh, that goal you scored.” Come on. Romário scored a thousand goals. I don’t care if I scored one goal.’
It’s unlikely he ever got on the field in an official match, even if it is sometimes reported that he played around thirty professional games. All the reports agree on one detail: that he scored no goals. ‘If he had gone on the field he wouldn’t have as much prestige as he does now,’ says Ricardo Ostenhas. ‘He would just be another rubbish player.’
Rio has never been the most anal of places: people live in the moment rather than treating life like a judicial review. ‘I honestly don’t care about the context of Kaiser’s story and what is true or not,’ says Marco Tioco, who helped bring it to light in 2011. ‘I thought that Bangu story was a lie, but other players have confirmed that it happened. It doesn’t really matter to me. It doesn’t change the context of his story.’
Some things have no explanation at all. The famous Ajaccio photoshoot, taken at Clube dos Macacos, includes some pictures of Kaiser in the shirt of the Austrian club Wacker Innsbruck. Fabinho and Alexandre Couto are sure they did not give that shirt to Kaiser, while Kaiser’s version – that he swapped it during a pre-season friendly with Ajaccio – can probably go in the dustbin.
‘I think the charming thing about it is that we don’t actually know what happened,’ says Júnior Negão. ‘It’s that ambiguity, which he sustained for many years. That’s his whole charm. Kaiser has a lot of stories, and those stories create the legend. You end up enjoying them because after telling the same lie four times it basically becomes the truth. So all his stories might as well be true. His story has now been eternalised.’
The story has a few more chapters left. For a 171, the hustle never ends. ‘In the context of the character he created, he’s a genius,’ says Renato Mendes Mota. ‘If Kaiser didn’t have that character I don’t think he’d even be alive today. He needed that in order to survive in Rio de Janeiro.’
***
The Wikipedia page for the 1984 Intercontinental Cup final between Independiente and Liverpool was changed in December 2017. There was an amendment to the list of Independiente substitutes, with the addition of somebody called Carlos Henrique Raposo. The edit history showed the IP address through which the change had been made. The location of that IP address?
Rio de Janeiro.
EPILOGUE
In April 2018, a cinematic documentary about Kaiser premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The festival was co-founded by Robert De Niro, so maybe Kaiser did get to go to the after-party with him.
The film included dramatisations, in which an actor called Eduardo Lara played the role of Kaiser. His performance was not entirely to Kaiser’s taste. ‘You have to teach the actor how a football player goes down on their knees when they’re playing,’ he says. ‘You can tell by the way they walk whether they’re a player or not. He might play badminton but he doesn’t play football. A real footballer will always know if somebody is pretending to be a footballer.’
It’s a delicious twist that the internet and a greater circulation of knowledge, the things that would have stopped Kaiser’s con at a stroke in the eighties and early nineties, have now given him a second wind. There have been articles about him in more than twenty countries, including prestigious publications like France Football, Der Spiegel in Germany and the Guardian in England. Each interview means a bit more money for Kaiser, and the chance to tell stories about the stories. It’s the grift that keeps on giving.
The extent of Kaiser’s deception is mind-blowing. A lot of his scams were fairly normal in Rio, but only Kaiser had the nerve and verve to pull them off on an industrial scale. ‘It’s impossible to conceive how he did all that,’ says the singer Bebeto. ‘The guy is either a genius or incredibly brave. I think he’s a genius. You need to open his brain up and study it, like they did with Einstein.’
Kaiser is a cross between Pelé, Frank Abagnale and Walter Mitty. He did not build a football career through lying; he built a whole life. His existence is a mosaic of small fibs that have made up one huge lie. That is the legend of Carlos Kaiser: the man whose life is based on a true story.
‘Rundown houses, violence everywhere’: Mena Barreto Street in Rio de Janeiro, where Kaiser grew up.
The two sides to Kaiser’s nickname: the imperious West Germany sweeper Franz Beckenbauer and the chubby beer bottle.
Kaiser’s first feature photoshoot, in the colours of his French club Gazélec Ajaccio.
Renato Gaúcho, Kaiser’s best friend, was the Brazilian superstar Europe never knew. When he won the Campeonato Carioca with Fluminense in 1995, he dressed up as the King of Rio the next morning.
Renato poses with Kaiser at his annual New Year party in Buzios; the two are joined by the former Flameng
o striker Gaúcho at a Brahma beer party.
The lndependiente squad that beat Liverpool to become world champions in 1984.
Kaiser hated alcohol but had enough moral flexibility to promote beer if there was something in it for him.
Kaiser shows off his luscious mullet. and some dubious 1980s fashion.
Kaiser had a range of self-publicity tools: newspaper articles, ID cards, even official prescriptions.
Castor de Andrade, the most dangerous man in Rio, was a father figure to Kaiser at AC Bangu. Castor (meaning ‘beaver’ in Portuguese) had such success at Bangu that a beaver was added to their kit in tribute.
Brazil’s 1986 squad, minus the exiled Renato Gaúcho, reached the quarter-final in Mexico.
The unknown fullback Josimar became an overnight star, but the romantic perfectionist Tele Santana again fell short of winning the World Cup.
Looking the part: Kaiser loved designer clothes, but the labels he really craved were Adidas, Umbra, Topper and Pony – the ones who made the official kit.
Kaiser was friends with the greats of Brazilian football, including Renato Gaúcho, Mauricio (below) and Carlos Alberto Torres (bottom right). And if he wasn’t friends, he would manufacture a photo opportunity – as he did with Zico before the 1986 World Cup.
The Rio Sul shopping mall, where Kaiser chatted up women, signed autographs pretending to be someone else and generally promoted himself.
Kaiser with Marcella Mendes, the love of his life.
Kaiser in 2018, doing what he does best: holding court and telling stories.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are loads of people I need to thank for their help with this book, so here goes: Gregg Bakowski, Alex Bellos, Will Billany, James Dart, Cris Freddi, Olivia Gannon, Tim Goddard, Daniel Harris, Laura McManamon, Steve Middleditch, Ray Mills, Alex Netherton, Alex Perkins, Richard Pike, James Pollard, Ian Smyth, Stewart Till, Steve Williams and Ed Wilson. Most of all, I’d like to thank and apologise to those I’ve inevitably forgotten to include in this list.
Rob Bagchi, Paul Doyle, Mike Gibbons, Daniel Harris and Scott Murray were full of sound advice, while every chat with Tim de Lisle made me want to attack a blank page.
I’ll always be grateful to Don McRae for introducing me to the weird world of Kaiser, and to Tom Markham, Rob Fullam, Stefan Choynowski and Louis Myles for asking me to write the book. Their support and ideas, especially when I was going mad trying to work out a timeline of Kaiser’s life, were invaluable.
In Brazil, Eduardo Pagnoncelli, Roberta Fortuna, Daniele Mazzer, Mariana Pinto, Martha Esteves, Paula Lima, Fernanda Rizzo and Reinaldo Borges Campos were indispensable and did everything from translating to driving. Without them, this would be a pamphlet rather than a book.
All the interviewees were generous both with their time and their memories of Kaiser. Every audience with Kaiser was memorable for all kinds of reasons.
It’s been a pleasure to work with everyone at Yellow Jersey – thanks to Richard Collins, Rowena Skelton-Wallace, Sally Sargeant, Joe Pickering, Sophie Painter, Matt Broughton, who designed such a brilliant cover, and especially Tim Broughton.
Most of all, thanks to Jay, Royal, Eli and Ethel for their love, support and silliness.
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Copyright © ROB SMYTH 2018
Cover from an image by Fernando Maia / Agência O Globo
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First published by Yellow Jersey Press in 2018
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