Carlos Kaiser (footballer)

Carlos Henrique Raposo (born 2 April 1963), commonly known as Carlos Kaiser, is a Brazilian former footballer who played as a striker better known as being a "farce footballer".^[1] He was selected to play with many teams in his decade-long career, but never actually played a regulation game and hid his limited ability with phony injuries, frequent team changes and other ruses.

Career

Early career

Nicknamed "Kaiser" due to resemblance to Franz Beckenbauer when he was young, Carlos Kaiser started his youth career at Botafogo, then moving to Flamengo. In 1979, he impressed the scouts of Puebla during a training session and was signed by the Mexican club, although he was released months after without playing a single match.^[2]

Farce footballer

He later returned to Brazil and started a career as a farce footballer since he "wanted to be a footballer, but did not want to play football", becoming friends of many footballers such as Carlos Alberto Torres, Ricardo Rocha and Renato Gaúcho so that he could have a big network to be recommended whenever he needed a new club. With a physical shape similar to professional footballers, but lacking skills, his fraud consisted of signing a short contract and stating that he was lacking match fitness so that he would spend the first weeks only with physical training where he could shine. At the time he went to train with other players, he would feign a hamstring injury and, by the lack of technology at the time, it was difficult to discover that it was a fake injury. He had a dentist to claim that he had focal infection whenever any club wanted to go further in the case. By following these steps, he went on to stay a few months at the clubs just training and without ever exposing that he was a fraud.^[1]

Another part of the farce was to be friends with journalists, so that they would write fake news about him. In one newspaper article, it was reported that he had such a great time at Puebla that he was even invited to become a Mexican citizen to play for the national team.^[1] He also used toy mobile phones, unpopular and expensive at the time, to create fake conversations in foreign languages or about rejecting transfer offers to create an image of a valuable player to the clubs.^[3]

Club career

Upon returning to Brazil, Kaiser went back to Botafogo, starting his farce career. While applying his fake injury scam, he also made use of the toy mobile phone scam by pretending to speak English to grant himself more time at the club, but was later discovered by a club doctor who was fluent in English.^[4] He later rejoined Flamengo and stayed a few months with the same injury scam.^[4]

Amongst his scams, he claimed that he played in Argentina at Talleres de Córdoba and Independiente being brought by a man named "Alejandro", who was a friend of Jorge Burruchaga and claiming that he was part of the squad that won both 1984 Copa Libertadores and the 1984 Intercontinental Cup by portraying himself as Carlos Enrique, an Argentinian player that was really part of the squad.^[2]

In 1986, he moved to Europe and joined French Division 2 club Gazélec Ajaccio where a friend was playing. At his presentation, the club arranged a training session with the fans and, afraid of being caught, he shot all the balls to the crowd while kissing the club's badge.^[3] He barely played at the club and returned to Brazil the following year,^[5] although his friendship with journalists later earned him an article where he was depicted as a top goalscorer at Gazélec Ajaccio where he had played for eight seasons.^[2]

Returning to Brazil, he joined Bangu where he again used his fake injury scam. However, Castor de Andrade, the club's major sponsor and patron was tired of seeing Kaiser just training and demanded that he was selected to play. Initially at the bench, Castor told the coach to play Kaiser as his team was losing by 2–0 and sent the player to warm up. Again afraid of being caught, he saw a group of supporters giving the stick to the players and started to fight them so that he was sent off before even entering the field. After the match, Kaiser lied to the patron that the supporters were calling him a thief. Kaiser was forgiven and earned a six-month extension.^[2]

Kaiser also had a spell at Fluminense where together with his injury scam, he again used a toy mobile phone to pretend denying offers from other clubs and stating that he was happy at the club, but was caught by an assistant.^[3] He later joined Vasco da Gama where he was signed to help a teammate to overcome an alcohol problem^[2] as he did not drink^[6] and had a reputation of being a good person.

Film

In November 2015 Carlos Kaiser signed an exclusive agreement with a UK production company, Nods & Volleys Entertainment Limited, which was specifically incorporated to tell his story on all media formats. Interview filming on a cinematic release was completed in December 2016.

Book

The book Kaiser: The Greatest Footballer Never to Have Played Football, by the journalist Rob Smyth, will be published in 2018.^[7]

References