Carlos Henrique Raposo, known in the football world as ‘The Kaiser‘ for his supposed resemblance to Franz Beckenbauer or ‘Forrest Gump’, had a 13-year career as a professional footballer without playing the game.
Throughout his career he managed to deceive Botafogo, Flamengo, Bangu, Fluminense, Vasco da Gama, America, Puebla of Mexico, El Paso of the United States and Ajaccio of France.
“The clubs have cheated the players a lot. Someone had to take revenge for all of them,” Carlos Kaiser justified himself to Rob Smyth.
“Kaiser has been one of the most iconic figures in world football. He only had one problem: the ball,” recalls Ricardo Rocha, former Real Madrid player, in ‘The Greatest Footballer Never To Play Football’.
His greatest adventure in football was his signing with Puebla of Mexico, with whom he spent barely six months, to later get contracts thanks to his player friends (Carlos Alberto Torres, Renato Gaucho, Ricardo Rocha, Romario, Edmundo and Gaucho) as a footballer with Botafogo, Flamengo and Fluminense but without having the intention of playing, faking injuries and missing training sessions to achieve his goal.
“The players knew about it, but they were all friends of mine. The journalists (whom he paid to publish reports)… nobody chased me,” explains the Kaiser himself about his ordeal.
The time he came closest to playing, against Coritiba, Kaiser got into a fight with the fans and was sent off before taking the field.
“I cheated the doctors. There was a time in the team I played for when they really wanted me to play and I had a friend who was a dentist. The president of the club came up to me and said, “You never play!” I said, “I have the medical report here and they finally found out what my problem is. It’s a dental problem. It was pure bullshit,” he recounts.
Carlos Kaiser: Being a footballer made me a magnet for women. I was a sex addict, like Michael Douglas
Kaiser told his story for the documentary film ‘The Greatest Footballer Never To Play Football’.
“I’m the greatest footballer who never played football. I slept with 1,000 women and pretended to be injured my whole career,” admits Kaiser, considered the greatest con man in Brazilian football after almost three decades as a professional footballer without playing a minute.
“I made sure I was seen with the best Brazilian footballers. Just being a football player made me a magnet for women. I was a sex addict, like Michael Douglas. I would sleep with at least three women a day,” he said in a 2018 interview with The Sun.