The absurd sto­ry of the great­est foot­baller nev­er to play football

There is some­thing odd­ly com­pelling about observ­ing a real-life per­son who is capa­ble of the absurd or the mon­strous. Some­one who acts in a way that seems unimag­in­able to you or I. Kaiser: The Great­est Foot­baller Nev­er to Play Foot­ball, released in UK cin­e­mas this week, chron­i­cles the quite ridicu­lous life of retired Brazil­ian foot­baller Car­los Hen­rique Raposo. Although lit­tle more than a curio to most Euro­pean sports fans, the mythol­o­gy sur­round­ing Kaiser (so named due to a spu­ri­ous sim­i­lar­i­ty to Franz Beck­en­bauer in his youth) is part of the fab­ric of Brazil’s foot­ball-obsessed culture.

Equal parts sports doc­u­men­tary, crime caper and char­ac­ter study, Louis Myles’ film uses a mix of dif­fer­ent gen­res and nar­ra­tive tech­niques to exam­ine this noto­ri­ous con artist in inti­mate detail. Through­out a career that spanned 26 years and 10 clubs, Kaiser nev­er set foot on a foot­ball pitch. A quixot­ic char­la­tan with a misog­y­nis­tic streak, the Brazil­ian spent his life sign­ing for pro­fes­sion­al clubs such as Botafa­go, Flu­mi­nense and Fla­men­go, only to fake injury on the first day of training.

What Kaiser lacked in ath­let­ic abil­i­ty he made up for in sub­terfuge. Known by the penal code for fraud, 171, in his home­land, the mul­let­ed mas­ter tac­ti­cian of manip­u­la­tion was wide­ly known for car­ry­ing showreels of oth­er play­ers he bore a pass­ing resem­blance to and engag­ing in roman­tic rela­tion­ships with the daugh­ters of chair­men. Kaiser was nev­er too far away from biki­ni-clad women, it seems.

Then there are his trade­mark tiny speedos, spaghet­ti danc­ing and uncan­ny abil­i­ty to always find anoth­er employ­er mere weeks after being found out by his pre­vi­ous one. When he was feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly brazen, Kaiser would pre­tend to be his dop­pel­gänger and best friend, Rena­to Gau­cho, to get into clubs or reserve tables at the finest restau­rants in town.

It all comes togeth­er to cre­ate one of those extra­or­di­nary car-crash sto­ries where you sit watch­ing – open mouthed, unable to look away – think­ing, ​‘How on earth did know one notice this at the time?’ And that, of course, is very much the point.

Large­ly com­prised of talk­ing heads and archival footage, and anchored by mul­ti­ple con­ver­sa­tions with Kaiser him­self, the film was pro­duced over the course of four years and 73 sep­a­rate inter­views. The release coin­cides with a new book by the sports jour­nal­ist Rob Smyth, which is filled with even more wild anec­dotes. It’s a tru­ly remark­able pro­file piece, but it’s also a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how sus­cep­ti­ble we all are to being lied to, as well as the will­ing­ness of the media to jump on board and, ulti­mate­ly, how quick­ly the buck can be passed.

For his part Kaiser, now 50 and seem­ing­ly sur­gi­cal­ly attached to a pair of sun­glass­es and a pair of fiancés, is a par­a­sitic pan­to vil­lain, a deceiv­er of pal­pa­ble charm and guile. In a Mick Huck­nall-esque twist, Kaiser claims to have slept with over a thou­sand dif­fer­ent women – just anoth­er out­ra­geous fib, per­haps, but the take­away from this cap­ti­vat­ing film is that we all love to be fooled sometimes.

Kaiser: The Great­est Foot­baller Nev­er to Play Foot­ball is released in cin­e­mas 29 July. For more info vis­it kaiserthe​film​.co​.uk