I am Carlos the Kaiser, football’s superstar fraudster
He was the biggest football legend never to step on to a pitch... a conman who became a soccer superstar without playing a single professional match in his life.
Carlos Henrique Raposo enjoyed a career spanning over two decades, getting signed by Brazil’s biggest clubs as well as teams in South America, the US and Europe.
Yet incredibly he barely so much as kicked a ball in all that time.
Known as Kaiser – due, he claimed, to similarities he shared with legendary German defender Franz Beckenbauer – he used a mixture of charm, lies and ingenious scams to dupe teams into signing him.
He showed fake videos of his “best goals” and paid “fans” to chant his name to persuade clubs he was a true star.
But whenever the moment came to show off his talent, he always found a cunning ruse to avoid having to play – such as feigning an injury, getting sent off, or claiming his gran had died. That last one he used at least four times.
Once, when he was about to be brought on as a sub for Rio team Bangu as the team was losing 2-0, he climbed on to a fence and started shouting obscenities at fans berating their team – and got immediately red-carded.
When he was presented as the star signing of French club Gazelec Ajaccio during a training session with fans, Carlos kicked every ball on the field into the adoring crowd as souvenirs.
With no footballs left to play with, the team had to do their training without – and Carlos Kaiser once again escaped having to reveal his inexperience.
To carry out football’s greatest con, he carried around photos of himself with Brazil’s most famous players, as well as the VHS video of goals – all scored by a near namesake and lookalike.
He fed information to journalists who wrote gushing articles calling him the King, and he even bribed boys in the crowd to chant his name at training.
Amazingly, he kept up the illusion for 26 years until he retired from professional football 14 years ago aged 41 – and went down in history as the star striker without a single goal to his name.
Carlos Kaiser’s fascinating story is now being told in a film, The Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football, directed by Louis Myles, as well as in a book by Rob Smyth, both out this week.
Many football fans scorn him, claiming he wanted to live the luxurious life of Brazilian World Cup stars without any of the skills or hard work.
But in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mirror, Carlos gives a different reason for his decades-long cover-up claiming he was stolen as a newborn by a woman who then forced him to make money for her by playing football.
Speaking from his home in Rio, he said: “I’m not the villain. I see myself as a victim. I always thought I’d been adopted, but I found out from my cousin that my adoptive mother, Lina, had stolen me from my mother when I was seven days old.
“My real mother thinks I’m dead. Lina was a cruel person who, when I was 10, put me into a football school and forced me to play to make her rich. But from that moment on, I hated football. “I did everything I could to not play, from the age of 10 until the day I never had to play again. Psychologists have told me that’s the reason I did what I did. I was never a bad person. I consider myself a survivor.” The way Carlos stole a living as a top footballer – in the 80s and 90s when Brazilian players were revered as demi-gods – is the stuff of legend.
After reluctantly going through the youth academy of Rio club Botafogo, 16-year-old Carlos was offered a trial at Mexican first division side Puebla FC, but failed to impress coaches and was released having never played a match.
After a brief spell at El Paso Patriots in the US, again without a single appearance, Carlos returned to his home city and, claiming he had helped win the 1984 Copa dos Libertadores with Argentine side Independiente, convinced Brazil’s biggest clubs to sign him.
Carlos haunted Rio’s most exclusive nightclubs in search of famous footballers, using his charisma to befriend the likes of Romario, Bebeto, Carlos Alberto and Zico, convincing them he was just as much a star as them.
As Brazil legend Bebeto recalls: “His chat was so good that if you let him open his mouth, that would be it. He’d charm you. You couldn’t avoid it.”
It was with the help of famous football friends that Carlos convinced many clubs to take him on, which started with Rio giants Botafogo, then Flamengo.
Once his contract and transfer fee were secured, Carlos’ mind turned to how he could avoid kicking a ball at all costs. He says: “Most footballers arrive at games concentrating on how to get on the pitch and win games, score goals. But I was the opposite. I spent the whole time devising ways to avoid playing."
Carlos always negotiated short-term deals with clubs. Once in, he would tell bosses he was not match-fit and needed a few weeks to concentrate on training.
When finally required to kick a ball he would drop to the floor, writhing in agony, claiming he had torn a hamstring.
He says: “I had a dentist friend who would give me a doctor’s note. And so the months would go by.”
He tried to convince others he was
I was never a bad person. I consider myself to be a survivor CARLOS HENRIQUE RAPOSO
fielding offers from European clubs, pretending to speak English on a toy mobile phone – until he was rumbled by a coach who spoke perfect English. However, his incredible career did include stints at clubs in Europe, including French side Ajaccio and Austria’s Wacker Innsbruck.
By the time he retired he had passed through 10 top-flight clubs, with a set of statistics like no other in history: no appearances, no goals, no assists.
Carlos, who now suffers from a dodgy hip and poor eyesight, has since become a Buddhist and has fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming a fitness coach, training female bodybuilders for a living.
He says: “I never liked football, football just wasn’t me at all. I’m not proud of what I did, and I regret not making the most of the opportunities that I was given.
“I could have been the great footballer everybody thought I was, if I’d have put the same effort into playing as I did in making everyone believe it.”