Kaiser

by Rob Smyth

***

  On the face of it, Brazil had almost the same personnel as in 1982. Santana was the coach, and their 22-man squad included Socrates, Zico, Júnior and Roberto Falcão. The flamboyant left-winger Eder would almost certainly have been in as well, had he not been sent off for chinning a Peru player during a friendly two months before the tournament. Yet the canary yellow was not quite as brilliant as it had been in Spain: all were in their thirties, most had injury problems, and only Júnior and Socrates were actually in the starting XI. Socrates later said the team were ‘has-beens’. That’s not such an insult when they had been arguably the greatest attacking team in the history of football, but it reflects the fact they were past their best.

  The brightest new star was Careca, the twinkle-toed striker who had missed the 1982 World Cup through injury and would later excel alongside Diego Maradona at Napoli. There were also high hopes that the twenty-three-year-old Renato Gaúcho, who had been in blistering form for Grêmio, would make a significant impact at international level. He played in most friendlies before the tournament and was a shoo-in for the squad.

  The team were at the Cruzeiro training camp in Belo Horizonte, a few days away from flying to Mexico, when Santana allowed them a night off to go to a barbecue. Four players missed curfew, but only two were caught – Renato and the defender Leandro. The others are still, more than three decades later, the subject of an omertà. Nobody is willing to give chapter and verse on what happened, though the majority say Renato was trying to help a monumentally drunk Leandro get back safely while the other two players jumped over a wall without being spotted.

  Santana already had reservations about Renato’s celebrity profile and chucked him out of the squad despite the pleas of the other players. Many felt Renato was sacrificed to scare the players into being on their best behaviour in Mexico.

  The incident didn’t just stop the press; it stopped the whole country. Martha Esteves says it was the story of the year. Kaiser read about it in the papers like everyone else and only spoke to Renato when he had returned to Porto Alegre. ‘I didn’t cry when my mum died,’ he says, ‘but I cried when Renato was axed in 1986.’

  Leandro, a favourite from the 1982 squad, was given a last warning and kept in the squad. Renato’s international career never quite recovered. He played forty-one times for Brazil and had his moments, including one divine slow-motion chip against Mexico during the Amistad Cup in Los Angeles in 1992, yet his World Cup career amounted to seven minutes as a substitute against Argentina in 1990.

  Leandro, who was drinking heavily at the time, felt so guilty that he pulled out of the squad, and did not change his mind even when his long-time Flamengo team-mates Zico and Júnior drove hundreds of miles from the training camp to visit him. The absence of Leandro meant a last-minute call-up for Botafogo’s uncapped right-back Josimar. He made his debut in the third group game against Northern Ireland and walloped an outrageous goal past the legendary goalkeeper Pat Jennings. In the next match, a 4-0 win over Poland in the last sixteen, he bettered that, rampaging past two defenders before screaming the ball into the net from a tight angle.

  Josimar would not go on to achieve much more in the game but mention of his name provides a Proustian rush to those of a certain age in every football country in the world. He even has a magazine named after him in Norway. Along with Italy’s Toto Schillaci four years later, Josimar embodies the magic and mystery of the World Cup before globalisation, when players who were completely unknown outside their own country captured the imagination of the whole world, and then often disappeared whence they came. Josimar and Schillaci are the World Cup’s greatest one-hit wonders.

  The 4-0 win over Poland put Brazil into their quarter-final with France with a record of four wins out of four, nine goals scored and none conceded. Their central-defensive pair of Júlio César and Edinho was probably the best in the world, the first time in history Brazil could make such a claim. They did not quite have the same attacking sparkle as the 1982 side, yet they were a much better all-round team, and are underrated in the pantheon of great Brazil sides.

  Brazil could easily have won the tournament – and the mouth will forever water at what might have happened had they come up against Diego Maradona in the final – but lost in the quarter-finals to France on penalties after a classic 1-1 draw. Maybe Castor was right about taking Marinho for his penalty prowess after all.

  The France match was almost perfect, a slow-slow-quick dance between two teams who, long before the term was invented, were disciples of tiki-taka. It was a cruel defeat for all kinds of reasons, not least because Zico, on as a substitute, missed a penalty in normal time that might have put Brazil through. Socrates then missed in the shoot-out. Neither would play for Brazil again. They never did win the World Cup, yet they were the brains of the last truly Brazilian team. ‘Zico was so stigmatised by missing that penalty that, in Brazil, the 1982 and 1986 teams go in the same bag,’ says Martha Esteves. ‘It’s almost like he wrecked that whole generation because he missed that penalty. It was very unfair.’

  There is a perception among many that Brazilian football as we know it died in 1982, yet the 1986 side comprised the same players, the same coach and the same philosophy. It’s just that the players were slightly past their magical best. They could still produce scintillating moments, both individually and collectively. Careca’s goal against France was a delicious, rat-a-tat team move that showcased the unique Brazilian ability, honed during kickabouts, to play football in a space the size of a phone box.

  ‘Nowadays football is all about perspiration,’ sniffs Kaiser. ‘In my day it was about inspiration. An example of a great Brazilian player now would be Neymar. My generation had over thirty or forty players of the same level. Players are more like athletes than footballers now.’

  Josimar could not cope with his new fame. He was seduced by a hat-trick of vices: women, booze and cocaine, the drug of choice for so many Brazilian footballers in the 1980s. ‘He was a great guy,’ says Gil, who managed him at Botafogo, ‘but he was a nutter.’ When he joined the Spanish club Sevilla, he brought his mistress with him and left his wife and child at home. Although he later played a part in Botafogo’s celebrated 1989 season, his career never came close to touching the heights of Mexico. He won a modest sixteen caps, and by his early thirties he was winding down his career at Club Deportivo Jorge Wilstermann in Bolivia. His brother was shot dead in Cidade de Deus, the City of God.

  Brazil’s other full-back in Mexico, Branco, lasted longer at the highest level. He won seventy-two caps for Brazil and played in Italy for Brescia and Genoa, as well as Porto in Portugal and Middlesbrough in England. He went abroad for the first time after the Mexico World Cup, when he joined Brescia from Fluminense. He took the same flight to Europe as another Fluminense player, the young striker Fabio Barros, who was on his way to join the Corsican club Gazélec Ajaccio. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for both players – and for Kaiser.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE CORSICAN

  The Wikipedia page on Brazilian expat footballers is never-ending. These days, almost all the best players leave well before they reach their peak. Neymar was twenty-one when he joined Barcelona; Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Barbosa were nineteen when they went to Manchester City and Internazionale of Milan. In 2017, Real Madrid paid almost £38 million to secure the transfer of sixteen-year-old Vinícius Júnior. Brazil’s 2014 World Cup squad included only four home-based players, and two of those were back-up goalkeepers.

  The 1982 squad, by contrast, had only one overseas-based player, and the 1986 squad two. A change occurred in the four-year cycle before the next World Cup, when Brazilian stars started to pop up all over Europe. By 1990, twelve of the twenty-two-man squad were playing abroad – and the other ten all did so at some stage in their careers. The brand of Brazilian football was so strong and glamorous that players became the must-have fashion accessory for any ambitious club, especially in Europe.

  Fabio Barros, known to all by h
is nickname Fabinho, was one of those to move abroad when he joined the Corsican club Gazélec Ajaccio in 1986. His brother Marco stayed in his apartment while he was away and became friends with Kaiser during that time. When Fabinho returned to Rio during the French league’s winter break, he started to hang out in the same group as his brother and Kaiser.

  Fabinho and Kaiser got on straight away – they had a shared sense of humour, a youthful zest for life and a nerdy interest in football. Kaiser was fascinated that a player who was largely unknown in his own country could have become a star overseas, and constantly asked Fabinho what life was like at Ajaccio.

  In January Fabinho returned to Corsica, and his performances in the No. 10 role were one of the main reasons that Ajaccio avoided relegation to the third division. The club owners speculated that Brazil must be full of untapped gems, and asked Fabinho if there were any players he would recommend. He promised to scout around when he returned to Rio for his summer holiday.

  When he heard that Ajaccio wanted to sign another Brazilian, Kaiser was so excited he couldn’t sit still. He was desperate to get away from Bangu before Castor de Andrade tried to get him on the pitch again. He nominated his services and impatiently dismissed any other suggestions made by the group:

  ‘Romário? He’s a one-season wonder.’

  ‘How many times has Bebeto won the Intercontinental Cup?’

  Fabinho had never seen Kaiser play, and suspected he wasn’t good enough for Ajaccio, but he liked Kaiser so much that he decided to suggest the club should sign him. They were sceptical at first, so Kaiser offered to send a video of his best goals. He resented the cost of the airmail but figured it was worth the gamble.

  A couple of months later, Kaiser – who still hadn’t played a first-team game in his life – was off to Ajaccio. He arrived to find the club had planned a training session, a gesture he kiboshed by enthusiastically hoofing all the balls into the crowd. A bigger surprise to Kaiser was the warnings from his new team-mates that there was a strong mafia connection to the club, and that he should be careful.

  ‘Mafia schmafia,’ says Kaiser. ‘I said, “Man, in my country I’ve already dealt with people a lot worse than them. And if they don’t like me I’ll get the first ticket out of here.” I met these people and they liked me. The only thing that shocked me in Corsica was the climate. It was so cold that a penguin would sleep inside a fridge. People really like the idea of living in Europe. Not for me. I like the sun and the heat. The sun is pleasure. Apart from the cold, it was a piece of piss. The mafia didn’t bother me at all. The most important thing I learned in Corsica is when somebody from the mafia said to me that Brazil lacked professionalism, because drug dealers take drugs and whores have orgasms. I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.’

  ***

  When a player joins a new club he usually receives a signing-on fee. Kaiser was given a signing-on female. ‘A beautiful blonde escort,’ he says wistfully. ‘A gift from those influential people on the island.’ It was Saturday night, a couple of days after Kaiser had arrived, and he could not find a vacant hotel for lust nor money. He grudgingly conceded that it probably wasn’t appropriate to take an escort back to the presidential suite the club had put him in.

  As he marched impatiently around Corsica, Kaiser wondered what kind of place didn’t have any love motels. When they eventually found a motel after almost an hour, Kaiser was affronted to discover he had to pay for the room first – and that he couldn’t just hire it by the hour like in the love motels of Rio.

  The language barrier was such that Kaiser and his companion had only managed to converse in sign language. When they finally got to the room, she signalled that they could do anything except have sex, as she was on her period. ‘You’re having a laugh!’ barked Kaiser in Portuguese. ‘I’ve already paid and lost my money!’

  After a fleeting yet monumental huff, Kaiser came up with a plan. ‘I managed to mime to her: “I am a good sportsman, so when the pitch is flooded I shoot from behind the goal.” You think I’d miss out after paying the motel? I’m Brazilian. I never give up.’

  Kaiser vowed to learn the local dialect after his escort fiasco and had a working vocabulary within a couple of months. In that time he experienced something thoroughly distasteful in the Ajaccio dressing room: a high level of professionalism. ‘Guy Calleja was a bad coach, really annoying, and the players were quite serious,’ he says. ‘They wanted to be in bed by midnight. Fabinho was ambitious, professional. Good for him.

  ‘I had a lot of private parties with the directors and those other people. Corsica was boring, so we’d go to Paris, Lyon, Nice or Marseille. I used to chat people up in the perfume shops.’

  Fabinho and Kaiser were the start of a little Brazilian colony in Corsica. They were later joined by Renato Mendes Mota, a good friend of Kaiser and Fabinho’s brother, and the young striker Alexandre Couto. Brazilian footballers are dotted around the world nowadays, but when the exodus started in the mid-eighties there were teething problems. For every Zico, who excelled at Udinese in Serie A and later became a kind of ambassador for football during his time in Japan, there were two or three Renato Gaúchos. He spent a disastrous season at Roma in 1988–9, when he failed to score a goal in twenty-three league games. He became a cult figure for how bad he was, and there are a number of lowlights compilations on YouTube.

  Renato’s lost season at Roma was a reminder that a happy player is an effective player. Although he explored as much of Rome’s nightlife as he could, he was desperately homesick. ‘I called him when he was in Rome and he was very sad,’ says Martha Esteves. ‘There was no footvolley, no family, no beach. He wasn’t Renato.’

  Nor did he find the most welcoming dressing room, with the local darlings Giuseppe Giannini and Bruno Conti making life difficult for him. The dressing room was only big enough for one heart-throb, and Giannini had taken the role. ‘It was very political,’ says Pica-pau, who remained Renato’s adviser for much of his career. ‘There were players who didn’t like him because he was good-looking and attracted loads of women.’ Kaiser comforted Renato by telling him he knew how it felt because he was having similar problems at Ajaccio.

  Some of Kaiser’s other friends also struggled overseas, including Gaúcho at Lecce in Italy, Tato at Elche in Spain, Maurício at Celta Vigo and, later on, Edmundo at Fiorentina. The strict professionalism was suffocating, particularly for those used to a freeform Carioca lifestyle. ‘Brazilian footballers were never as professional as players in Europe,’ says Gonçalves. ‘We had a bohemian lifestyle, especially in Rio, with how easy it was to spend your free time at the beach or go to a samba show or a BBQ. There’s not so much of it nowadays but that’s how it was back then – especially at Flamengo. There would be famous Flamengo fans, singers and musicians in particular, in the dressing room. There would be a band playing. The final training session before a derby game was an event in itself. There was nothing professional about it.’

  ***

  Kaiser ended up getting more press than those who were actually playing for Ajaccio, most of it in the gossip columns. He was particularly close to Mancini, the sporting director. Mancini was an Italian in his early forties who ticked many midlife crisis boxes, including ownership of a Honda CBR 1000 motorbike. ‘Mancini was really relaxed; playful, happy,’ says Alexandre Couto. ‘He liked to live well, let’s put it like that. He never looked like a guy who carried a gun or anything, but you could see from the way he talked he was different. When he spoke seriously, there was something different there.

  ‘Kaiser’s relationship with the club couldn’t have been worse. The coach and some of the players didn’t like him. But Mancini had his back. It was like a wing of protection above Kaiser. The violence in Corsica can be really bad. Let’s not beat about the bush, it’s mafia.’

  Kaiser became great friends with Mancini, just as he had with Castor de Andrade. ‘I became a kind of Corsican ambassador. The people in the boardroom changed my name and called me Charles
Henry because they wanted me to be a Corsican.’

  Kaiser befriended some of the world stars who were playing in France, including the Colombian Carlos Valderrama and the Uruguayan Enzo Francescoli, who was the idol of a young Zinedine Zidane. When Zidane’s first son was born in 1995, he named him Enzo in honour of his hero. Kaiser also met Ruud Gullit, one of the stars of the AC Milan side that won consecutive European Cups in 1989 and 1990, who took Kaiser to one of his favourite places in the world.

  As a teenager, Kaiser had dreamed about playing for Ajax. They were the coolest club side in the world, with Johan Cruyff inspiring a revolutionary form of Total Football. All of which had absolutely nothing to do with Kaiser wanting to play for them. ‘My dream as a little boy wasn’t to go to Disneyland, it was to go to Amsterdam, the land of mischief,’ he says. ‘What would I do at Disneyland? Go on the ghost train? Meet Mickey? That doesn’t turn me on. I’d rather meet Mickey’s wife!’

  Most footballers who played in Rio in the 1980s and 1990s have heard a tale or twelve about Kaiser’s time in France. ‘What’s the club he’s talked about a thousand times?’ says Alexandre Torres, the Brazilian international and son of Carlos Alberto. ‘That’s it, Ajaccio! The players used to gather round and he would tell stories. He created a fun, happy and light-hearted mood. He would tell stories and he would get players dreaming. That’s why everybody liked him so much. When he told that story about the escort, all the lads went crazy! Everybody was jumping around as if it was a goal!’

  The younger players were particularly wowed by Kaiser’s tales. Roger Flores was seventeen, just another kid from a poor neighbourhood on Fluminense’s books, when he spent New Year’s Eve with Kaiser, Renato Gaúcho, Gonçalves and others. ‘I was there with stars in my eyes as Kaiser told his stories. I thought, “Maybe this will happen in my life too.” People like being around optimistic, funny people. That’s what he brought to us.’