Kaiser

by Rob Smyth

  CHAPTER 10

  THE LOVER

  The Bangu band provided a cheery soundtrack to every match played at the club’s home ground, Moça Bonita. They went through a familiar playlist each time, with their most popular song taken from a children’s TV show. ‘Superfantastico’ was the jaunty, squeaky anthem of the popular Bãlao Mágico, with lyrics like ‘Superfantastic! The world is a lot more fun on the magic balloon! That’s why I’m here!’ All very innocent, except the balloon had the kind of evil face that tends to turn dreams into nightmares. At times the programme had the look of an eighteen-certificate kids show. There was another character which bore a striking resemblance to a dancing penis, and spent its time diligently stroking an egg. It didn’t win many awards for subtle symbolism.

  Castor loved the show, especially the theme, and got the Bangu band to trumpet it at every home game. ‘Superfantastico’ became a superstition: Castor was convinced Bangu would never lose a game if that song was played, and he wasn’t going to let the times they were beaten get in the way of that belief. Whenever Castor gave team talks to the players, he told them they were the balloon bringing joy to an impoverished region.

  He was not the only one who conducted the band. Kaiser invited them to play at training on Fridays, when they would sing: ‘The world can cry and moan, but Kaiser is the best in the world.’ The fact he had paid them to do so only partially compromises the touching sentiment, and Kaiser wells up as he sings the song almost thirty years later.

  ‘Being back here is like being in a time machine,’ says Kaiser, leaning forward in the dugout at Moça Bonita in an old Bangu shirt. ‘If there’s one place I lived with love and pleasure, it was here. I start to regret that I threw so many opportunities out of the window. I didn’t reciprocate all the affection that people had for me. Not just the fans but the people who lived in the neighbourhood. The sexual conquests I had here, too. But we can’t keep looking back into the past.’

  When Castor heard the band singing repeatedly, and apparently unprompted, about an injured player it increased his affection for Kaiser – as did the sight and sound of random kids from the favela chanting his name during training. Castor assumed they must have seen Kaiser play elsewhere and started to think Bangu had the second coming of Pelé in their treatment room. They didn’t chant with half as much zeal about Marinho and Ado, the star players of the team.

  As with the Bangu band, Kaiser had offered certain incentives to lubricate their throats. In this case he told a young ballboy, Marcelo Henrique, to get the kids who were watching training to chant his name. In return Kaiser bought Henrique a bottle of Coca-Cola and a packet of biscuits.

  Kaiser’s relations with both the players and Castor were so good that he became a conduit between the two. The squad had long been unhappy at training during the day, when Bangu’s forty-degree heat was at its most vicious, but none dared approach Castor about it. Kaiser, who by now was at the running stage of his rehabilitation, simply refused to train. When he was summoned to explain himself to Castor, he gave the Doctor the benefit of his football experience.

  ‘When I was in Arabia, it was so hot that we trained in the evening. Come on, Doctor: forty degrees is subhuman. It’s like the devil is training next to us. You’re risking the athletes’ safety.’

  Castor concurred and changed the training times. Kaiser had never been to Arabia, though he had once seen a film about it.

  When training sessions moved to the evening, Kaiser ensured they doubled up as a social event. He literally brought a busload of girls most evenings, organising a barbecue and a pool party during and after training. The club sauna became a de facto love motel. On one occasion, Kaiser arranged a samba band to perform during training; the session was watched by almost 2,000 people.

  ‘I thought Kaiser was awesome,’ says Romarinho, a younger member of the squad. ‘He would always rock up with a van full of fifteen or twenty women. He’d be all nonchalant, like, “Hey lads, these are my acquaintances”. Kaiser was the dog’s bollocks. His contact list is … immense.’

  ***

  Castor’s investment enabled Bangu to develop a powerful side in the mid-1980s. It included Marinho, the flying winger who would follow the likes of Zico and Roberto Falcão as Brazilian Player of the Year, Mauro Galvao, Ado, Paulinho Criciuma and Arturzinho. And Marco António, the man whose dreams were still haunted by Castor pulling a gun on him.

  Their finest season was in 1985, when they were runners-up in both the Campeonato Carioca and Campeonato Brasileiro. They came within a penalty shoot-out of winning the Brazilian national title, an achievement that would have registered extremely high on the Leicester Scale of Sporting Miracles.

  The Brazilian championship has traditionally been the kind of thing you need a PhD to understand. In 1985 there were four groups in the first phase, with each playing two mini-leagues. The teams that finished top of each mini-league qualified for the next phase along with the two remaining teams with the best overall record.

  Coritiba finished eighth out of ten in the first round, losing more than half their games, but finished top in the second phase – so although they were seventh in the overall qualification table they were one of four teams to go through to the second phase. They finished top of their group, then beat Atlético Mineiro in the semi-final to reach a final against Bangu.

  The game at the Maracanã was effectively a home match for Bangu, with almost all of the 91,527 crowd supporting them. They had become the neutrals’ darlings, with all of Rio captivated by the feelgood, age-old story of the plucky underdogs bankrolled by the most dangerous man in the state.

  It was, and still is, the biggest game in Bangu’s history. They were much the better team in a 1-1 draw. Coritiba’s keeper Rafael was inspired, while Marinho had a fine goal disallowed for offside. Not only was it the wrong decision, it was a strangely belated one: Marinho had time to run through, go round the keeper, nutmeg the defender on the line and start a celebratory jig before the flag went up. ‘The word “robbed” is very strong but it’s the truth,’ says Kaiser. ‘We were shafted by the ref.’

  It went to a penalty shoot-out to decide the league champions. Coritiba won 6-5. The identity of the fall guy was particularly cruel: Ado, who describes Bangu as ‘the love of my life’, had three spells at the club as a player and is now technical director. After he missed his sudden-death penalty against Coritiba, there was much nothing about Ado; a promising career never truly recovered from such a trauma.

  That season Bangu won eight games more than Coritiba and had a goal difference of +32 to Coritiba’s -2. But the book will always say that Coritiba were the champions, a feat that Bangu have still not achieved. ‘Our biggest frustration is that we didn’t bring Castor the title,’ says Marinho. ‘It wasn’t our title, it was his title. The person most deserving of becoming Brazilian champion was him.’

  Given Castor’s history with referees, it’s fair to assume Romualdo Arppi Filho also had a few sleepless nights over the next few weeks.

  Kaiser was in no mood for small talk. It was four o’clock on Sunday morning and he was working up a sweat at Caligula, one of his favourite nightclubs. He didn’t want to chat to strangers – not about football, not about anything. Bangu had a big game later that day but that wasn’t Kaiser’s problem. He was a footballer, not a football player.

  He was entertaining a new acquaintance in a secluded booth when he felt a tap on the shoulder. Kaiser snapped his head round impatiently, his face a picture of exasperated disdain, to see a nervous young man staring at him gormlessly. There was, he said, an urgent call for Kaiser.

  Kaiser harrumphed his way to the office and picked up the phone.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Moises.’

  ‘Fuck sake, Moises, what do you want? I’m in the beaver burrow!’

  ‘The boss man wants you on the bench today.’

  Moises was the Bangu coach. The boss man was Castor de Andrade.

  ‘What? It’s 4 a
.m., I’m knackered. How am I going to play?’

  ‘Calm down, Kaiser, you can just stay on the bench. I’m not going to put you on the pitch. But if the boss man wants you on the bench, you’re going on the bench. I’m not risking my kneecaps because you’re horny and having a late night.’

  A drained Kaiser got back to the team hotel as the players were rising for breakfast. He went straight to bed. As word spread that Kaiser was going to make his debut, the players – who had no idea Kaiser had already ensured he would be a non-playing substitute – didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. For months Castor had believed that Kaiser had a niggling injury that wouldn’t go away. If it became apparent that Kaiser had been extremely economical with the truth, and taking money under false pretences, Castor was likely to want a lot more than a pound of flesh in return.

  Kaiser played to the gallery in the dressing room, raucous laughter echoing as he outlined his plans to score a hat-trick and then head straight back to Caligula. The game started, and Kaiser was drifting happily into an al fresco siesta when the opposition took the lead. Three minutes later it was 2-0. Kaiser was furious, principally because the voluble discontent from the home fans was making it impossible for him to nod off. The punishing forty-degree heat did not help; Kaiser hadn’t been drinking the night before – he never did – but he looked like a man with a furious Diet Coke hangover, sweat streaming into his sunken eyes.

  In the stands, Castor had whipped himself into a state of murderous apoplexy. The match was only fifteen minutes old when he called for a walkie-talkie so that he could communicate with Moises on the bench.

  ‘Moises, put the big man on. Stick him up front so that he scores.’

  When Moises suggested that Kaiser was struggling with injury, Castor asserted that somebody else would be struggling with injury if his man wasn’t brought on as substitute.

  ‘Kaiser, the boss wants you on.’

  ‘What?’ said Kaiser. ‘We agreed I wasn’t going to play!’

  ‘I’ve done my job. Go and do yours.’

  Moises turned to Paulo Lumumba, the physio.

  ‘Lumumba, warm him up over there!’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Moises, you’re taking the piss!’

  As Kaiser started to warm up, he broke into a desperate sweat, caused by a combination of the heat and the fear that his first appearance for Bangu might be his last for anybody. Kaiser’s warm-up was fast becoming a meltdown. If he wasn’t scared of Castor de Andrade before, he was terrified now.

  Like all self-respecting rogues of Rio de Janeiro, Kaiser had spent a life extricating himself from the malodorous stuff. This time, even he was struggling to see a way out.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE FIGHTER

  Kaiser was on the verge of tears as he jogged in front of a section of home supporters who were unimpressed that he still hadn’t kicked a ball for the club. The homophobic sleuths among them considered his luxurious mane and deduced he was a ‘long-haired faggot’.

  Kaiser couldn’t remember the last time he threw a punch. But occasionally you have to compromise your principles to save your kneecaps – so Kaiser used the abuse from the stands as an excuse to clamber over a fence and into the crowd, where he started landing indiscriminate haymakers. A mass brawl broke out within seconds. It went on for so long that the match was stopped, with players on both sides watching from the sidelines.

  Eventually Kaiser scrambled back over his fence, spitting blood at his feet. The referee sent Kaiser off before he’d had chance to come on the pitch. Kaiser went through the motions of protesting the decision, but inside he was doing cartwheels. He had escaped exposure, for the time being at least, and went to the dressing room to work out his next move.

  ***

  ‘Man, you are fucked.’ Kaiser’s heart thumped with fear as his team-mates returned to the dressing room at half-time. ‘What have you done? The Doctor is going to kill you.’ For once, nobody was sure of the extent of the metaphor. The chatter turned instantly to silence as Castor marched into the dressing room, flanked by two heavies whose knuckles seemed to be twitching in anticipation.

  Without saying a word, Castor walked over and stood a couple of yards in front of Kaiser, who was sitting on one of the dressing-room benches. His eyes were at waist level, and the only thing he could concentrate on was the gun that was sticking out of Castor’s pocket. Kaiser stood up and cleared his throat.

  ‘Doctor, please, allow me to say something,’ he said. ‘God took both my parents away when I was thirteen years old but he gave me another father: you. When those bastard fans accused you of being a crook I lost it and went for them. They are not real Bangu fans. I should have taken all of those fuckers out. I know I let the club down but I would do it again. Don’t worry, my contract is up in a week and I’ll be off.’

  Kaiser took a deep breath and waited. And. Time. Stood. Still.

  Castor leaned forward and whispered in Kaiser’s ear. ‘You’re a good boy, Kaiser.’ And then he started cackling, the most beautiful cackle Kaiser had ever heard in his life. ‘Joel!’ said Castor to his supervisor. ‘Put another six months on Kaiser’s contract and double his pay. We need people like this at the club.’

  Diet Coke and grilled chicken never tasted as good as they did that night. The story has become part of Rio football folklore. Ask anyone about Kaiser and it is one of the first things they will tell you. ‘Kaiser spent another six months suckling the bosom!’ laughs Gil, the former Brazil international who later managed Kaiser at Botafogo. ‘Castor saw him as a son. He tolerated Kaiser’s blunders and lies because he was a legend at the club.’

  As on so many other occasions – when he was naked on the balcony, when Castor was seduced by those two young women – Kaiser employed one of the oldest tricks in the rogue’s book. He told the person opposite him what they wanted, and needed, to hear. In this case, it may have saved his life.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE WORLD CUP STAR

  Kaiser styled his hair like Elvis, unbuttoned his denim shirt to the breast and headed off to meet somebody special. Or, rather, somebodies special. The Brazil squad were at the Hotel Nacional, the cylindrical skyscraper designed by the famous modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer, for a pre-World Cup buffet with the media. Kaiser decided that having Brazil’s greatest players in one room was too great an opportunity to miss.

  When he reached the function room, Kaiser’s entry was blocked by a security guard.

  ‘Sorry, this is for the Brazil team and media only,’ he said to Kaiser.

  ‘Haha.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I said I admire your sense of humour.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean, sir.’

  ‘Oh, my G—You don’t recognise me, do you?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, I suppose it depends if you are a football fan.’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  Kaiser sighed with weary disdain as he took an old Fluminense ID card out of his pocket. ‘I’m Henrique, I play for Fluminense and I’m on the standby list for the World Cup squad. I respect that are doing your job but it would be pretty embarrassing if it got out that you had denied entry to a player of my stature. I wouldn’t want you to lose your job over something like that.’

  Kaiser pointed towards the left-back Branco. ‘Look, ask him, he will confirm I’m not some chancer trying to con my way in.’

  After a short conversation between the security guard and Branco, Kaiser was allowed in, accompanied by a thousand apologies. ‘It’s no bother,’ he said. ‘I understand you were just doing your job. But maybe next time you should educate yourself about the people you are supposed to be looking after. This isn’t the Under-12s team.’

  Once he was inside, Kaiser got photos with as many of the squad as possible – those he knew well, like Branco and Leandro, and those he didn’t like Zico and Roberto Falcão. If any of the players queried him, Kaiser told them he was a senior editor at O Globo, Rio
’s biggest newspaper, and that he was collecting the photos to cheer up his nephew, who was in hospital having an operation.

  Kaiser soon had his own personal collection of World Cup snaps with which to win favour with everyone from restaurant owners to women.

  If he was asked why everyone else was in official Brazil gear and he was dressed casually, Kaiser explained that he had not had a chance to change into his sportswear as he had been late returning from a TV appearance that afternoon, delayed because he would rather sign every autograph request than leave one of his young fans unhappy.

  ***

  The squad, excluding Kaiser, soon travelled to Toca da Raposa, the Cruzeiro training ground that was used as a base before they flew to Mexico. Strictly speaking, Castor de Andrade was not supposed to be part of their preparations. Tele Santana, the most disciplined of coaches, could barely believe it when, at the end of a training session, he saw the most feared man in Brazil conducting an impromptu penalty competition with one of his players.

  Marinho, the star of Bangu’s nearly men, had made his international debut in 1986 – a whopping ten years after playing for Brazil at the Montreal Olympics – and was part of an extended squad that had to be cut to twenty-two before the team went to Mexico.

  Castor told Marinho they were going to have a penalty competition, with a crisp banknote the prize for every goal. It was not uncommon for Brazilian players to lark about during training. In 2002, the captain and key midfielder Emerson dislocated his shoulder while moonlighting in goal and missed the World Cup. As Marinho converted one penalty after another, Castor shouted, ‘Hey, Tele, this guy is amazing at penalties, can’t you let him play?!’

  Marinho didn’t make the World Cup squad.