by Rob Smyth
Kaiser’s life of lies has taken a psychological toll as well. A secret is a heavy load, and Kaiser has been carrying ten tonnes on his back for decades. And if you live life to the full, as Kaiser did, there’s a danger you’ll eventually live it to breaking point. It is notable that there are few mirrors in Kaiser’s flat. The one person he struggles to lie to is the man in the mirror.
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Kaiser has no siblings or children able to help him out. He was a father twice when he was younger, but those experiences fill him with regret.
‘I didn’t see my first son,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t mentally ready to be a father. I met a girl in Mexico City when I was with Puebla. I was only seventeen. But she wanted the child and he was born. His name was Pablo. I never really saw him and I heard later that he died in an earthquake in Mexico City. The tragedy stuck with me.’
Kaiser became a father again in his early twenties during a relationship with a model and actress named Mara Reis. ‘I never wanted to have that child. Mara was a great person but it was a difficult relationship. One day she took the car down towards Copacabana and let go of the steering wheel. She said, “If you don’t want to have this child all three of us will die.” I said, “Fine, let the three of us die then because I don’t want that child.” But we didn’t hit any cars.’
The child was named Carlos Kaiser Alvarenga Leandro, but Kaiser saw very little of his son once he and Mara broke up. ‘I made him but I didn’t watch him grow up. He admired me from afar. His mum insisted on calling him Carlos Kaiser, so wherever he went the first thing people would ask him is whether he was my son.’
After that, he always wore protection – he says his fear of parenthood was far greater than his fear of HIV. ‘As soon as you start talking to me about babies I’ll do a runner. It’s something that doesn’t bring me any pride, having a kid with somebody, I think it’s a massive responsibility. I don’t deserve to be anyone’s father.’
There is a temptation to question everything Kaiser says, but Luiz Maerovitch confirms he did have a son. ‘Mara was really eye-catching, a really pretty brunette with long hair down to her waist,’ he says. ‘Kaiser met her when she was judging a beauty contest. They had a beautiful son. And Kaiser really threw away a family. He didn’t invest anything in it. He swapped his family for good and bad friendships, sadly. He preferred to have a nocturnal life rather than a normal one with Mara. I think he was always looking for something more or maybe a chance to show his friends his worth by how many women he could pull or people he could charm.’
Kaiser’s friends talk a lot about his missed opportunities, both personal and professional. He was too lost in the moment to think of tomorrow. The upshot is that now, in his fifties, he has very little stability. He continues to do well as a fitness trainer, but in everything else there is a sense of impermanence. He doesn’t own a flat, he still has a hole in his pocket, but he no longer has the tools to run Rio de Janeiro. He thought he’d be a footballer forever.
Most of Kaiser’s friends regularly encouraged him to put his contacts, brain and instinct for marketing to better use. ‘With the mouth he has on him he could have become the most successful agent in the world, because he knows loads of players and had access to all the clubs in Rio,’ says Fábio Braz. ‘But he always wanted to play the game of getting money by other means. He never wanted an honest job where he had to get up every morning and work hard. He wanted to wake up, go to the beach, hook up with women.’
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A few years ago Kaiser received a call to say his son, who worked for Banco do Brasil in Campos dos Goytacazes, had been killed during a robbery. ‘You always think you’re going to die before your son. But it’s not hard for me to talk about it. There has been a long succession of deaths and losses in my life.’
A number of Kaiser’s football friends and acquaintances have died in recent years, including Marinho Chagas, Gaúcho, Rocha, Dirceu, Carlos Alberto Torres and Moises. Then there were the deaths of his sons – and the one that took the floor from under him, when his wife Marcella Mendes passed away. ‘After she died, I felt so alone so I got together with somebody else,’ says Kaiser. ‘She died, too. Then another one dies from a heart problem. I thought, “Come on. I’m becoming a gravedigger.” Then I wake up one day and I can’t see. I don’t make anybody answer for that. I don’t make God answer for it. I don’t ask my friends answer for it. Fuck. Why do I have to suffer so much, man?’
There are still many people who care deeply about Kaiser – more than he realises – but most have moved onto a different stage of their life, with families and responsibilities. They cannot remember the last time they saw him. ‘I got married and left it all behind and didn’t hear from him,’ says Gonçalves. ‘Time went by. Footballers don’t always go to the same place so we kind of disbanded.’
It doesn’t help that most of the players’ wives would, understandably enough, rather their husbands had little to do with him. Yet the affection towards him is enormous. Kaiser is the friend who reminds them of the best days of their lives and they want him to be happy. They know that half of what comes out of his mouth is untrue but they don’t care. They don’t have to believe him to believe in him. ‘Kaiser, I don’t see you much, because that’s life, but you’re a brother,’ says Valtinho. ‘I wish for lots of good things in your life. You’re a really special guy and a dear person.’
His health problems are not common knowledge. When Maurício, the Botafogo attacker, was told about Kaiser’s struggles, he brushed away tears. ‘I hope he achieves his goals, and he has a black brother here,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was having problems.’
Kaiser believes he is suffering a kind of Karmageddon. ‘As a Buddhist I believe nothing goes unpunished. In Buddhism we don’t believe in Hell. Hell is here, right now. You pay for whatever you do wrong right here. And there is a price for having deceived people, for the mistakes I’ve made. I believe everything I’ve done in my life – being inconsiderate, relationships with other people’s girlfriends – is coming back. In Buddhism they would say that I lost my vision in order to see the world in a different way. Nowadays I take more care with people’s hearts. Life experience makes you more of a man.’
He says he created Kaiser because he was running from the truth of his childhood. Now, at least on the bad days, he struggles with the lies of his adulthood. ‘This rogue that everyone imagines is a façade,’ he says. ‘That’s maybe why I’ve lived other people’s lives so much. It was so that I didn’t have to stop and think about my life. That Carlos Kaiser who went out to the best places … that guy was built on strong legs. Because Carlos Henrique, he jumped over a lot of hurdles.’
Suddenly Kaiser swings from despair to defiant pride. ‘I wasn’t born to lose,’ he says. ‘I really believe in myself. I could have done a lot more right, but I didn’t let all the adversity lead me to the dark side. I think I’m a role model. I’m an example that you can play sport and study at the same time. I believe that something good will happen for me. I will build the family I never had.’
The one constant in Kaiser’s life is his work as a wellness and fitness coach. He has his own YouTube show and plugs his work at every opportunity, whether it’s approaching strangers on the beach or going on The Jô Soares Show. He specialises in bodybuilding, and only coaches women. ‘I don’t work with meatheads or guys,’ he says. ‘The rest of the market is all for them. I only work with women who want to become showgirls with a hot body. I’ve trained thirty-five bodybuilding champions in the last ten years. I’m not just a good wellness trainer, I’m the best. And most of the women I get involved with sexually and emotionally are all from the wellness category.’
Even in his fifties, Kaiser still has a ferocious sexual appetite. There are touches of the old vanity, too. Dror Niv noticed that, as he got older, Kaiser would never take a shower in public or get his hair wet because it exposed a bald patch that he covered by pushing his hair across. He also dyes it jet black.
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There is still a spark of mischief, especially when he is telling stories about the stories. ‘If a chance to talk about football comes up he’ll begin to relive all his past successes,’ says Gil. ‘And with the mouth he has on him he’ll deceive you and get something from you. He’s a sweet talker so he can convince anybody in the world.’
His new career allows him to put a fresh spin on his old tricks: handing out gym vouchers to women, having sex with students in the dressing room. His work does not pay much, so he is always on the lookout for a quick buck or a free meal. ‘It gets tiring,’ says Dror Niv. ‘If you come in my restaurant and I let you eat for free, you can’t – you shouldn’t – take liberties. But people still like him. Old times, you know?’
Kaiser has found other ways to earn money. He befriended a plastic surgeon and became a middleman for breast-enhancement jobs, taking commission on every customer he recommended. He also had two fiancées in the same gym, with one working out in the morning and the other in the afternoon. When one of them found underwear from a third woman on Kaiser’s couch, the whole thing unravelled.
Kaiser’s other students knew about his double engagement and played along. ‘It was very tricky,’ says Manuela, one of Kaiser’s students. ‘It was really funny, too. Bonkers. He’s an emperor!’
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One framed photograph sits alone on a wall in Kaiser’s apartment. It was taken in Búzios in the mid-1990s, and shows Kaiser crouching alongside his second son and Renato Gaúcho. ‘That really touches me,’ says Renato. ‘It makes me really happy and from that you can see his character. You can see that I’ve been friends with him ever since I met him. It wasn’t fleeting. So it’s a recognition of the family that he didn’t have. That flatters me. That makes me happy and very moved.’
The wallpaper on his phone is the picture with Renato Gaúcho and Gaúcho at the Brahma beer launch. He has bags full of reminders of his youth – all the newspaper articles, photos and videos. There is also an article about Marcella, taken from a glossy magazine. It has the stamp of Pergus, the gym from which it was stolen.
Nostalgia is Kaiser’s best friend and his worst enemy. He is in a tortured limbo, a twentysomething trapped in a fiftysomething’s body. He struggles to accept that the party is over; that he will never again be the King of Rio. Kaiser has become accustomed to death. But he will never stop grieving the loss of his youth.
CHAPTER 33
THE ENIGMA
Kaiser wants to make one thing clear. ‘I did this book,’ he says, ‘to tell the truth.’ But in Brazil there are many truths, many truths. Kaiser’s memory is somewhere between selective and defective and there is an undeniable element of fantasy to his tale. His story requires not only the suspension of disbelief but also of modern attitudes – Rio in the eighties and nineties was a very different place to the Western world in 2018.
The more you look into his story, the more one thing becomes clear: a lot of this stuff really did happen.
‘If you tell somebody from abroad about Kaiser, they will call you a liar,’ says Gil, the former Brazil forward and Botafogo manager. ‘But everyone involved in football in Rio de Janeiro knows about him. He’s a professional con man. He found a way to make a living through lying. I think he’s the only person on the planet who for twenty-six years played football without putting on a pair of boots. He doesn’t even know that the ball is round.’
Everybody has a different take on what did or did not happen. ‘I’m not sure about some of his stories,’ says the dentist Ricardo Ostenhas. ‘I could have a Real Madrid ID card here from when I was twenty years old. Where’s the proof? Are there photos or footage? But I saw him training at Fluminense; I saw him walk off with the beautiful girl that everybody wanted. Ah, Kaiser, you’re a real character, man. Fuck me.’
One person will tell you he was at Independiente at Argentina, another that he has never had a passport and simply took advantage of the fact they already had a player called Carlos Enrique. ‘I believe he was at Independiente,’ says Marcio Meira, the Fluminense fitness coach. ‘I believe he found some way to be there because he is phenomenal. In that respect he is Maradona. If he told me that he was hanging out with the Argentinian squad at the World Cup I’d believe it. I just don’t believe he played.’
There are a number of credible sources who place Kaiser at Vasco, Botafogo, Fluminense, Bangu, America, Cruzeiro, Flamengo and Palmeiras at various points in the 1980s and 1990s. His official Brazilian Football Confederation player book has contracts for the last two, while he also has official prescriptions for anti-inflammatories from Fluminense and Vasco.
In an attempt to stress the scale of Kaiser’s deception, his old friend Adriano Dias Oliveira breaks excitedly into pidgin English. ‘Arsenal! Tottenham! Chelsea! He sign! Sign contracts! Never play!’
Bangu openly admit that Kaiser was with the club in two spells, in the mid-1980s and again in 1994. Some other clubs are not so forthcoming. A few have issued po-faced denials of Kaiser’s presence, even if their story is contradicted by ex-players or employees. ‘It’s something that doesn’t sound that good,’ says Júnior Negão. ‘A professional football team having a player who never played. So as the years have passed, the owners end up denying everything, saying it was a hoax or a rumour. They don’t want to be associated with his story.’
Kaiser paints himself as a variation on Robin Hood, getting something back for the players who had been treated badly by chairmen. ‘It doesn’t surprise me that they deny I was there. There has always been a core of directors for whom I didn’t pay dividends on the field. Some got over that; some didn’t. A lot of them talk as if it were a son who’s let down his father. They prefer to forget that Kaiser existed. Every club I’ve been at probably won’t admit it because I was a disappointment for them. But clubs screw so many people over that somebody had to trick the clubs. I was a trailblazer – a superhero for the players, because I didn’t screw them over. While chairmen were exploiting players in Brazil and all over the world, I was exploiting them. You can’t buy a torch and say that it doesn’t turn on because you won’t be able to sell it on. All the teams I went to celebrated twice. Once when I signed and then again when I left. The only exception to that was Bangu.’
Fabinho, the former Ajaccio forward, saw Kaiser go through the departure lounge for a flight to Texas to play for El Paso; Fabinho’s brother saw him sign for Bangu. ‘Listen,’ says Fabinho. ‘There are some true things. I saw him train at Fluminense – just training, I never saw him play. I don’t know if he had a contract there. He trained at Vasco, too. He did actually go to El Paso. I think he was at Palmeiras. I heard from many people that was pretty much how the Bangu story went. But Independiente in Argentina is another total fabrication just like Ajaccio. I don’t believe anything about Puebla either.’
Alexandre Torres, Renato Gaúcho and Ricardo Rocha have a simple rule to determine whether Kaiser is telling the truth. If the story is on the field, it’s a lie; if it’s off the field, it’s true. ‘I believe everything,’ says Ricardo Rocha. ‘That he had an orgy with the prime minister. I believe he went to big clubs like he says. There’s only one thing I don’t believe: that he played football. I’m not quite sure about that. I’m aware of his problems with the ball. He has a serious problem. He’s very good at everything else. Send him a kiss and a hug. A great friend.’
It’s tempting to assume some of the more extreme stories, like his fight with the fans at Bangu, were fabricated. But Marcelo Henrique, a ballboy that day, remembers it all in detail.
Many of Kaiser’s friends don’t even know his real name is Carlos. His nickname has accompanied him ever since he was compared to Franz Beckenbauer. Luiz Maerovitch says he was given the name because he was chubby and resembled a beer bottle. The real truth could be any variation of both stories. Kaiser beer did not exist until 1980, so it’s possible Maerovitch and his friends took an established nickname and gave it a different origin; or it might be that Kaiser was given that ni
ckname in the 1980s and created his own backstory.
Most aspects of Kaiser’s life have a similar ambiguity that is as fascinating as it is frustrating. Just when you think you have a handle on the truth, something contradicts it. Kaiser was useless at football? Jair Pereira, manager of Atlético Madrid, says he was talented. Kaiser never went abroad? Fabinho, who blew holes in the Ajaccio story, saw him board a flight to El Paso.
It’s natural to assume Kaiser did not have the talent to be spotted by Botafogo as a child, but he has a dog-eared old ID card that looks like it came straight out of 1977, and includes a picture of a child who strongly resembles the adult Kaiser. It looks impossible to fake, but with Kaiser you never quite know.
There are also photos of Kaiser with stars of Brazilian football like Carlos Alberto Torres, Edmundo and Maurício – not to mention hundreds with Renato Gaúcho. They are natural and authentic, not staged like the ones with the Brazilian World Cup squad of 1986.
Some are more sceptical than others about Kaiser’s stories. Dror Niv, the restaurateur, takes everything with a massive pinch of salt. ‘When I met him in 1986 he was in good shape,’ he says. ‘He once told me that he went on a diet and lost forty kilos. So when did he lose these forty kilos? I asked some people who knew him as a teenager and they said he was fat then. So if he lost forty kilos, which youth team did he play for? If he’s seventy-five kilos now he must have been a hundred and fifteen kilos as a teenager. Explain the maths for me. It doesn’t fly.’
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Most of Kaiser’s friends don’t believe his suggestion that sex was his only motivation for being a footballer. They think he was desperate to be a professional but was born without the necessary talent, and settled for the next best thing. The access to women was a happy consequence of that and served to fuel his ego. ‘He wasn’t addicted to sex like a famous actor,’ says Alexandre Couto. ‘His obsession with sex was all about his own image, and how people would see him. He wanted to show off that he was capable of pulling the most attractive women.’
