The Unbelievable Truth and Tall Tales of Carlos Kaiser, Football’s Greatest Conman

Introduction: The King of Rio and the Art of the Red Card

The air in Rio de Janeiro is thick with heat and desperation. The year is 1988, and the Bangu Atlético Clube is losing a crucial match 2-0. On the bench sits the team’s supposed star striker, a charismatic figure known as Carlos Kaiser. In the stands, the club’s powerful and notoriously dangerous patron, Castor de Andrade, has seen enough. A message is radioed down to the coach: put Kaiser in the game.¹ For any other player, this is the call to glory. For Carlos Kaiser, it is the moment the world’s most elaborate sporting con is about to unravel. For over a decade, he has built a career on a foundation of lies, and now, for the first time, the lie is being called. He has to play.

As he jogs to the sideline to “warm up,” his mind races. He cannot play. He knows it, and soon, everyone else will too. Then, he spots his salvation: a group of opposition fans hurling abuse at his team. In a flash of desperate genius, Kaiser abandons his warm-up, charges towards the fence, and instigates a furious brawl with the supporters.¹ The referee, seeing the chaos, immediately brandishes a red card. Kaiser is sent off before ever setting foot on the pitch. His secret is safe, for now. This single, audacious act encapsulates the central paradox of Carlos Henrique Raposo. How did a man whose abilities were “far short of professional standard” not only survive but thrive for over twenty years in the cutthroat world of Brazilian football?.⁵ He secured contracts with giants like Botafogo, Flamengo, and Vasco da Gama, and even had stints abroad in Mexico, the United States, and France, all without ever playing a single official game.⁶

This report deconstructs the myth of Carlos Kaiser. It will examine his formative years, dissect the systematic “Kaiser Method” of deception, and analyze the unique cultural and technological context of the 1980s that made his fraud possible. By exploring the blurred lines between man and myth, fact and fiction, it seeks to understand one of the most remarkable and audacious impostors in the history of sport.¹

Part I: The Forging of a “Farce Footballer”

A Scoundrel’s Origins

Carlos Henrique Raposo was born on April 2, 1963, in either Porto Alegre or Rio Pardo, but his story truly begins in the impoverished Botafogo neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro.³ His own narrative, a key component of his persona, is one of hardship. He claimed to have been abandoned by his birth mother and raised by an alcoholic adoptive mother who weighed 200 kilos and eventually died from her addiction.¹⁰ He grew up surrounded by the violence of the favelas, an environment that, in his telling, presented a stark choice: “they taught me I could either be a sucker or a scammer. so I made my choice”.¹¹ This backstory provides the psychological foundation for a life built on wits and deception. His street smarts, or

malandragem, were honed early; he recounts cutting flowers from a cemetery to sell at the entrance, an early sign of his resourceful and opportunistic nature.¹⁰

The Legitimate Spark and the Epiphany

Crucially, the Kaiser legend was not built on a complete fabrication. There was a kernel of truth that made the larger lie plausible. As a youth, he showed enough promise to be accepted into the academies of two of Rio’s biggest clubs: Botafogo from 1972 to 1973 and, most impressively, the famed Flamengo from 1973 to 1979.¹ He was not a phantom; he was a legitimate, if limited, youth player. This early legitimacy culminated in 1979 when, at just 16 years old, he impressed scouts from the Mexican club Puebla during a training session and was signed to his first professional contract.⁸

This move to Mexico proved to be the pivotal moment of his life. He was released just months later “without playing a single match”.⁸ For most aspiring athletes, this would be a crushing failure. For Kaiser, it was an epiphany. He realized the brutal effort required to succeed legitimately was not for him, but the lifestyle that came with being a footballer—the fame, the women, the parties—was everything he desired. It was at this crossroads that he formulated his life’s guiding principle, a philosophy he would repeat for decades: “I wanted to be a footballer, but did not want to play football”.³ He had discovered a different path to the same destination.

What’s in a Name? The Birth of “Kaiser”

Even his nickname is a perfect microcosm of his manufactured persona, with two conflicting origin stories that encapsulate the duality of his life’s work. The version he actively promoted was that he earned the moniker “Kaiser” due to a purported physical and stylistic resemblance to the legendary German defender and captain, Franz “Der Kaiser” Beckenbauer.² This was a masterful piece of personal branding, instantly associating him with European class, on-field intelligence, and authority. It was a grandiose, marketable lie that gave him an air of credibility he did not possess.

The far more likely, and comically mundane, reality was offered by his friend, Luiz Maerovitch. He claims the nickname stemmed from Raposo’s resemblance to a squat, round bottle of Kaiser beer, a popular brand in Brazil at the time.⁸ This conscious cultivation of the Beckenbauer myth while a more humbling truth existed demonstrates his innate understanding of image and marketing from the very beginning. His entire career would follow this pattern: projecting an image of elite, world-class talent to conceal a simple, almost laughable, lack of substance. The story was always more important than the reality.

Part II: The Kaiser Method: Anatomy of a 20-Year Con

Kaiser’s deception was not a series of ad-hoc tricks but a sophisticated, repeatable, and self-reinforcing system. Each layer of the con was designed to support the others, creating a nearly impenetrable fortress of fraud that allowed him to hop from club to club for over a decade.

Layer 1: The Entry – The Power of the Network

The foundation of Kaiser’s entire operation was his unparalleled network. He understood that in the world of football, perception and relationships were currency. He made it his business to haunt the nightclubs of Rio, strategically befriending the biggest names in Brazilian football: World Cup winners like Romário, Bebeto, and Carlos Alberto Torres; national heroes like Renato Gaúcho and Zico; and other stars like Edmundo and Ricardo Rocha.³ He became the ultimate “fixer” and “Fun Coordinator”.⁷ He organized lavish parties, arranged for women to meet his teammates at hotels, and made their off-field problems disappear. In one notable instance, he took the fall after a teammate knocked someone out in a nightclub brawl.⁷

This cultivated loyalty was not without purpose. It operated on a barter system. In exchange for his services as a social lubricant, his famous friends would recommend him to their clubs. A good word from a star player was often all it took to secure a short-term “risk contract,” typically for three to six months—the perfect length of time to collect a signing bonus and several months’ salary before the ruse wore thin.⁸ As the legendary striker Bebeto later recalled, Kaiser’s powers of persuasion were almost hypnotic: “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”.⁴ This network provided the crucial first step: access.

Layer 2: The Stall – Buying Time and Looking the Part

Once through the door, Kaiser immediately executed the second phase of his plan: buying time. Upon signing, he would inform the club’s management that he was “lacking match fitness” and required several weeks of specialized physical training before he could join the rest of the squad for technical drills.⁸ This was a stroke of genius. While he lacked footballing skills, he possessed a genuinely athletic physique, standing at 1.84 m (6 ft 1⁄2 in).⁸ He could excel in fitness training, running laps and doing stretches, looking every bit the professional athlete. This allowed him to integrate into the club, collect his salary, and maintain the illusion of being a dedicated professional, all while crucially avoiding any activity that involved touching a football.⁶

Layer 3: The Ruse – The Phantom Injury

The cornerstone of the entire con was the phantom injury. After his initial period of “physical conditioning,” the pressure to join full-team training and actually play would inevitably mount. This is when he would deploy his most reliable tactic. The moment he was required to participate in a scrimmage or a drill with a ball, he would suddenly collapse, clutching his hamstring and feigning a muscle tear.¹

He masterfully exploited the limitations of 1980s medical technology. In an era before Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), diagnosing soft-tissue injuries was highly subjective and relied heavily on the player’s own account.² It was nearly impossible for a club doctor to definitively prove he was not injured. To add layers of authenticity to his claims, he enlisted a friend who was a dentist to provide fake medical certificates. The dentist would claim Kaiser was suffering from a “focal infection” in his teeth, which was supposedly causing his recurring muscle problems—an absurd but difficult-to-disprove diagnosis.⁸ On other occasions, he admitted to paying youth-team players to tackle and injure him during training sessions, ensuring he had a legitimate reason to spend weeks in the infirmary.⁶

Layer 4: The Myth-Making – Manufacturing Value

While “recovering” from his phantom injuries, Kaiser worked tirelessly on the final layer of his con: manufacturing his own value. He understood that a player who was perpetually injured would eventually be released. He needed to create the illusion that he was a highly sought-after asset, worth waiting for. He achieved this through two primary methods.

First, he colluded with friendly journalists. In exchange for gifts, club jerseys, and insider gossip, certain members of the press would write glowing, entirely fictional articles about his career.⁶ The most infamous of these stories, published in a major newspaper, claimed that his (non-existent) time at the Mexican club Puebla had been so successful that he was on the verge of being offered Mexican citizenship to play for their national team.⁸

Second, and perhaps most famously, was his use of a toy mobile phone. In the 1980s, cell phones were enormous, expensive, and the ultimate status symbol.²¹ Kaiser carried a fake one and would stage loud conversations in broken English, audibly rejecting non-existent transfer offers from major European clubs, all within earshot of his teammates, coaches, and club presidents.⁸ This created the perception that he was a valuable player on the international market. The ruse was famously exposed at Botafogo by a fitness coach who was a fluent English speaker and realized Kaiser was speaking pure gibberish.¹² But by then, the damage was done, and the myth had been established.

This systematic approach created a flawless, self-perpetuating loop. The network provided access. The fitness claims bought time. The fake injuries provided the excuse. And the media manipulation inflated his value, making clubs more patient with the injuries and more willing to believe the initial recommendations from his star friends. Before a club’s patience could fully expire, his short-term contract would be up, and he would move on to the next team, armed with another prestigious name on his fraudulent CV.

Part III: The Legend in Action: Three Defining Moments

While the “Kaiser Method” explains the ‘how’ of his con, the ‘what’ is found in the legendary, almost folkloric, tales of his time at various clubs. These moments showcase a con artist operating at the peak of his powers, turning moments of certain exposure into triumphs of manipulation.

The Bangu Gambit: Deceiving a Gangster

Kaiser’s masterpiece of improvisation occurred during his time at Bangu, a club controlled by one of Rio’s most powerful and feared bicheiros (illegal lottery bosses), Castor de Andrade.⁶ As detailed earlier, with Bangu losing 2-0, the direct order came from Castor himself to put his “star striker” in the game.¹ Facing imminent discovery, Kaiser manufactured a red card by fighting with fans.¹

The true genius, however, came in the aftermath. An enraged Castor de Andrade stormed into the dressing room, ready to terminate Kaiser’s contract and likely inflict much worse. But before the gangster could utter a word, Kaiser seized the initiative. Looking his powerful boss in the eye, he delivered a monologue of pure, calculated manipulation: “God gave me a biological father and then he took him. But he gave me another one,” he said, pointing directly at Castor. “And I will never allow any fan to call my father a thief”.¹ Castor, a man accustomed to violence and intimidation, was completely disarmed by this audacious display of feigned loyalty. Moved, he not only forgave Kaiser but rewarded him with a hug, a salary increase, and a new six-month contract extension.² Kaiser had not just survived exposure; he had profited from it.

The Corsican Crowd-Pleaser: Performance Art in Ajaccio

In 1986, Kaiser’s network landed him a move to Europe, with French second-division side Gazélec Ajaccio.² Upon his arrival, he was horrified to discover that the club had organized a public presentation in a stadium packed with thousands of fans, all eager to witness the skills of their new Brazilian signing.¹ The injury excuse would not work here; he needed a new trick.

Thinking on his feet, he created a masterful diversion. He ran onto the pitch, and instead of juggling or shooting, he began grabbing every single football available and kicking them one by one into the adoring crowd as souvenirs. All the while, he repeatedly and passionately kissed the club’s badge on his jersey.¹ The fans went wild with delight. By the time he was done, there were no footballs left for a technical training session. The coaches were forced to conduct a purely physical workout, which Kaiser, with his athletic build, could handle with ease. He had transformed a moment of extreme peril into a public relations masterstroke, endearing himself to the fans without ever having to reveal his secret.

The Ghost of South America: The International Man of Mystery

Kaiser’s career wasn’t just about avoiding playing; it was about retroactively building a storied history out of his failures and non-appearances. His CV included stints at Mexico’s Puebla, the El Paso Sixshooters in the USA, and most audaciously, the Argentine giants Independiente, who were the reigning Copa Libertadores champions at the time of his supposed signing.³

His time at these clubs was a masterclass in ambiguity and identity theft. To bolster his claim of having played for Independiente, he allegedly posed as a different player, Carlos Henrique, who had a similar name and had actually been part of the trophy-winning squad.¹ He would use photos of himself in the team’s jersey—gifts from his player friends—as “proof” of his illustrious past.¹³ The brief, unsuccessful stint at Puebla was spun by his journalist allies into a heroic tale of a player so beloved he was nearly granted Mexican citizenship.⁸ His time in Ajaccio is shrouded in similar mystery; while some reports suggest he made sporadic 20-minute appearances, club officials from that era, like sporting director Michel Mancini, claim to have no memory of him at all.¹² Kaiser operated in these gray areas, turning brief, insignificant associations into cornerstones of his mythical career. He didn’t just erase his failures; he rewrote them as triumphs.

Part IV: A Perfect Storm: The World That Made Kaiser Possible

Carlos Kaiser was a brilliant conman, but his success was not achieved in a vacuum. He was the product of a specific time and place, a perfect storm of cultural, technological, and institutional factors that created the ideal environment for his fraud to flourish.

The Analogue Advantage: A Pre-Information Age

The single most critical factor enabling Kaiser’s career was the era in which he operated. The 1980s and early 1990s were a pre-internet, pre-YouTube, pre-globalized media world.⁶ Today, a player’s entire history—every match played, every goal scored, every video clip—is available instantly with a few clicks. In Kaiser’s time, fact-checking a player’s claims, especially if they involved foreign leagues, was a difficult and laborious process. Club officials had to rely on newspaper clippings, word-of-mouth recommendations, and the player’s own account—all three of which Kaiser had learned to expertly manipulate.¹ The lack of information technology was the fertile soil in which his lies could grow.

The Beautiful, Chaotic Game: 1980s Brazilian Football

The structure of Brazilian football itself provided loopholes for a character like Kaiser to exploit. During the 1980s, the national league system was often chaotic, with a fluctuating number of participating clubs and an unstable promotion and relegation system.²⁵ This lack of rigid organization and oversight created cracks in the system.

More importantly, the governance of many top clubs in Rio was deeply entwined with the world of Jogo do Bicho, an illegal gambling racket. Powerful and wealthy patrons known as bicheiros, such as Bangu’s Castor de Andrade, effectively ran these clubs.⁷ For these men, who operated outside the conventional rules of business and law, qualities like personal loyalty, charisma, and social influence could be just as valuable as on-field talent. Kaiser understood this alternative value system. He made himself indispensable not as a player, but as a social asset who “bonded the group together” by organizing parties and keeping morale high.⁶ His relationship with these clubs was not purely parasitic; it was symbiotic. He provided a service—entertainment, social cohesion, unwavering personal loyalty to the patron—and was “paid” with a footballer’s contract and lifestyle. The clubs were not merely victims of a con; they were, in some ways, willing participants in a system where off-field value was a recognized and rewarded currency.

The Soul of Rio: The Archetype of the Malandro

To fully understand why so many people protected Kaiser for so long, one must understand the Brazilian cultural archetype of the malandro. The malandro is a stock character in Brazilian culture, particularly in Rio de Janeiro. He is the charming, street-wise scoundrel who lives by his wits, games the system, and is viewed with a complex mixture of condemnation and admiration.⁷ He is an artist of the con, a lovable rogue.

Carlos Kaiser is perhaps the ultimate embodiment of the malandro in the sporting world. Within the context of Rio’s laid-back Carioca culture, his exploits were often seen not just as fraudulent, but as entertaining and clever performances.²² This cultural tolerance, and even celebration, of the charming trickster is key to understanding why his teammates and friends found him amusing rather than contemptible, and why they were complicit in his deception. He wasn’t just a liar; he was a performer, and his stage was the entire football world.

Part V: The Man Behind the Myth: Motivation, Truth, and Legacy

Beneath the layers of audacious lies and hilarious anecdotes lies a more complex and, at times, poignant human story. Separating the real Carlos Henrique Raposo from the manufactured persona of “Kaiser” is a near-impossible task, as his life has become an exercise in narrative construction.

The Kaiser Confessional: Justifying the Lie

In his later years, and particularly in the documentary and book about his life, Kaiser has offered justifications for his decades-long deception. He frequently traces his motivations back to a traumatic childhood, claiming he was “massively damaged” by his upbringing.¹¹ He presents his life’s path as a conscious choice made in response to a cruel world. “I never harmed anyone, I never took anything from anybody even though life took a lot from me,” he has stated, framing his actions as a form of victimless rebellion.¹¹ He simply chose to be the “scammer” rather than the “sucker”.¹¹ Whether this narrative is a genuine rationalization for his behavior or simply the final, most sophisticated layer of his con remains a matter of interpretation.

The Rashomon Effect: Conflicting Testimonies

The truth of Carlos Kaiser is a fluid concept, entirely dependent on the perspective of the storyteller. His legacy is a perfect example of the Rashomon effect, where contradictory and subjective accounts make a single, objective truth impossible to ascertain.

On one side are the admirers, his friends and former teammates who remember him with fondness and amusement. World Cup winner Bebeto spoke of his irresistible charm.⁴ Carlos Alberto Torres, his first captain, described him as a “one-off” who brought value to the group by being a social fixer and a source of entertainment.²⁶ These men were in on the joke and enjoyed the ride.

On the other side are the purists of the game, who view him with contempt. The legendary Zico delivered a scathing assessment, calling Kaiser “an affront to professional football” and a “complete liar”.²⁸ For Zico and others like him, Kaiser’s con was an insult to the dedication and sacrifice required to be a true professional.

Somewhere in the middle are the ambivalent observers. Bangu’s marketing director, Pedro Nardelli, acknowledged the fraud but couldn’t help but admire Kaiser as an “artist in the art of tricking,” noting that the infamous Castor de Andrade “liked someone who was an artist”.²² Meanwhile, officials from his French club, Gazélec Ajaccio, claim to have no recollection of him at all, adding another layer of mystery and doubt to his story.²²

The Myth Immortalized: The Book and the Film

In the 21st century, Kaiser’s legend has been revived and cemented in popular culture, primarily through the 2018 documentary Kaiser: The Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football, directed by Louis Myles, and the accompanying book of the same name by journalist Rob Smyth.³ These works, featuring extensive interviews with Kaiser himself, walk a fine line between investigating and perpetuating the myth. The filmmakers described the process of interviewing their subject as a “game of cat and mouse,” a constant struggle to unravel the truth from a master storyteller who has spent a lifetime blending fact and fiction.²⁷

Life After Football: The Final Act

After his “career” finally ended in the 1990s, Carlos Kaiser did not fade into obscurity. He leveraged his notoriety into a new life. Today, in his 60s, he works as a personal trainer.⁶ In a final, winking coda to his life story as a notorious womanizer, he works exclusively with female clients.¹¹ The performance, it seems, never truly ends.

Conclusion: The Greatest Footballer Who Never Played

The story of Carlos Kaiser is more than just a humorous anecdote about a clever conman. It is a profound commentary on the nature of fame, the power of image, and the very essence of value. He was a master of social engineering, a man who understood that in the world he inhabited, the perception of talent was more valuable than talent itself. He thrived by identifying and exploiting an alternative economy within football, one where charisma, networking, and entertainment were tradable commodities.

His career was a perfect storm, made possible only by the unique conditions of a pre-internet world and the chaotic, patronage-driven culture of 1980s Brazilian football. In the hyper-monetized, data-saturated, and relentlessly scrutinized landscape of the modern game, a character like Kaiser could not exist.³² His story serves as a relic from a bygone era, a time when myth could still triumph over metrics.

Ultimately, Kaiser’s legacy is as complex and contradictory as the man himself. Was he a harmless parasite or a genius performance artist? A charming rogue or an affront to his profession? The answer likely lies somewhere in between. But one thing is undeniable. In a sport defined by goals scored and games won, Carlos Kaiser achieved a unique and unparalleled form of greatness. He stands alone in the annals of football history, perfectly described by his own, self-aware epitaph: “I’m the greatest footballer who never played football”.⁶ Looking at the evidence, it is impossible to disagree.

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Appendix: The Kaiser Archive

Table 1: The Phantom Career of Carlos Kaiser

The following table provides an at-a-glance summary of Carlos Kaiser’s official senior “career,” starkly visualizing the scale of his unprecedented achievement in professional sports. The data is primarily sourced from publicly available career records.⁸

Years	Team	Country	Official League Apps	Official League Gls
1979	Puebla	Mexico	0	(0)
1979–1981	Botafogo	Brazil	0	(0)
1981–1983	Flamengo	Brazil	0	(0)
1983–1985	Independiente	Argentina	0	(0)
1985–1986	Bangu	Brazil	0	(0)
1986–1987	Gazélec Ajaccio	France	0	(0)
1987–1988	Flamengo	Brazil	0	(0)
1988	Bangu	Brazil	0	(0)
1988–1989	Fluminense	Brazil	0	(0)
1989	Vasco da Gama	Brazil	0	(0)
1989–1990	El Paso Sixshooters	USA	0	(0)
1990–1991	América (RJ)	Brazil	0	(0)
1991–1992	Botafogo	Brazil	0	(0)
Total			0	(0)

Media & References

A curated list of resources for further exploration of the Carlos Kaiser legend.

Filmography

• Title: Kaiser: The Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football (2018)
• Director: Louis Myles
• Description: A feature-length documentary chronicling Kaiser’s life through interviews with Kaiser himself, as well as football legends like Zico, Bebeto, Carlos Alberto Torres, and Renato Gaúcho.²⁹
• Viewing Platforms:
  • Amazon Prime Video:(https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Kaiser-The-Greatest-Footballer-Never-to-Play-Football/0TVOA99K7SRQ2MPQ0T5LDFUIZN) ²⁹
  • Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/ie/movie/kaiser-the-greatest-footballer-never-to-play-football/umc.cmc.7cizqve9tn2eub9f9yzl0rv2u ³⁴
• Trailers:
  • Official UK Trailer (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qib7eqbg0O8 ³⁵
  • IFI Trailer (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pia0e_YK9K8 ³⁶

Bibliography

• Title: Kaiser!: The Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football
• Author: Rob Smyth
• Publication Date: 2018 (UK), 2021 (US)
• Description: The official book companion to the documentary, providing a detailed written account of Kaiser’s life and scams.⁹
• Publisher Links:
  • Sports Publishing / Simon & Schuster: https://thebookbungalow.indiecommerce.com/book/9781683584247 ³⁰
  • Penguin Books (Yellow Jersey imprint): https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/437293/kaiser-by-rob-smyth/9781787290259 ³⁸

Curated News Reports & Articles

• VICE: “The Incredible Story of the Greatest Footballer to Never Play Football” – https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-incredible-story-of-the-greatest-footballer-to-never-play-football/ ⁷
• FourFourTwo: “Confessions of Carlos Kaiser: football’s biggest conman” – https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/confessions-carlos-kaiser-footballs-biggest-conman ²²
• Hudson Reporter: “Carlos Kaiser: The Biggest Cheater in Football History” – https://hudsonreporter.com/sports/carlos-kaiser-footballs-biggest-cheater/ ⁶
• These Football Times: “Carlos Henrique Raposo: football’s most audacious con man” – https://thesefootballtimes.co/2015/05/30/carlos-henrique-raposo-footballs-most-audacious-con-man/ ¹²
• Atlas Obscura: “The Soccer Star Who Scammed the Pros for a 20-Year Career” – https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soccer-con-man-brazil ²⁰

Video Archive (YouTube)

• Documentary Clip: “‘Pure lies’: an exclusive look at Kaiser! The Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI1i3t9CXKo ³⁹
• Documentary Clip: “The Greatest SCAMMER In The History Of Football” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycW5w4xgOa0 ¹¹
• Summary Video: “The GREATEST SCAMMER In Football History.” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsmXYohIpd4 ⁴⁰
• Short Summary: “He Was Pro For 13 Years And NEVER Played A Game” -(https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lJ0ZnmbSchw) ⁴¹
• Director Interview: “Interview With The Makers Of ‘Kaiser'” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ALQm1WFa9A ⁴²

Image Gallery Links

• Best 100 Football: A blog post featuring several photos of Kaiser during his “career” – https://best100football.wordpress.com/2020/07/03/carlos-kaiser-greatest-fake-footballer/ ²
• Now I Know: Article with a prominent picture of Kaiser – https://nowiknow.com/the-greatest-soccer-player-who-never-was/ ⁴³
• Getty Images: Search results for “Kaiser” which may contain relevant editorial photos from the era – https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/kaiser-gallery ⁴⁴

Podcast & Audio

• NPR’s Radio Ambulante: “Kaiser, Fútbol Club” – An in-depth audio documentary on his story (available in Spanish with English transcript) – https://radioambulante.org/en/translation/kaiser-futbol-club-translation ¹⁰
• Citation Needed Podcast: “Carlos Kaiser” – A podcast episode discussing his life and career based on his Wikipedia article – https://podcasts.apple.com/vc/podcast/carlos-kaiser/id1236993492?i=1000676836500 ⁴⁵