Due to exceptional demand, the IFI has added a screening of Louis Myles’s Kaiser: The Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football this Saturday, August 4th at 15.30. The most incredible untold story in soccer history.
In the late 20th century, Brazil were the most glamorous soccer team in the world. Players like Zico, Socrates, Romario and Ronaldo turned a team game into performance art. Yet one of their biggest stars never set foot on the pitch.
Carlos Henrique Raposo, known to all as Kaiser, grew up in a Rio de Janeiro slum with one dream: to become a professional footballer. He lacked the talent to do so by conventional means, so he constructed an elaborate alternate reality that enabled him to join some of the most iconic clubs in world soccer – and to enjoy all the trappings of high society that came with it. He was a self-made VIP.
Kaiser had more front than Copacabana beach. He was immune to embarrassment and afraid of nothing. He duped superstar players, coaches and even the most dangerous gangsters in Brazil to achieve his goal of being a footballer. It was sporting fraud on an unprecedented scale.
His scams and lies brought such notoriety that he was known as the King of Rio.
It is only now, in this documentary, that the full story can be told.