{"id":593124,"date":"2026-04-22T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=593124"},"modified":"2026-04-22T10:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T14:16:12","slug":"carlos-kaiser-greatest-player-never-kick-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2026\/04\/22\/carlos-kaiser-greatest-player-never-kick-ball\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Kaiser &#8211; The Greatest Player to Never Kick a Ball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Meet Carlos Kaiser, a Brazilian footballer whose magical ingenuity was not really found on the pitch but rather in avoiding being on the pitch in the first place.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carlos Kaiser &#8211; The Greatest Player to Never Kick a Ball<\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"max-width: 600px\"><smartframe-embed class=\"smartframe_wp_element\" customer-id=\"cd0dd1b91a4067356bae3f8562645fa8\" image-id=\"elcBFMgtlllT\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 2317px; aspect-ratio: 2317\/1678;\" ><\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Who Is Carlos Kaiser?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most football fans have had to accept the disappointing reality that no matter how desperately they want to live the footballer lifestyle, they simply lack the ability to become football&#8217;s next international star.\u00a0 But maybe the dream is not yet dead.\u00a0 What if there was a way to unlock the sports cars, adulation and big football contracts, without even being able to kick a ball?\u00a0 What if being a charismatic and talented deceiver can pave the way for a 26-year career in the world&#8217;s greatest sport?\u00a0 Welcome to the unbelievable story of Brazil&#8217;s Carlos Kaiser.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Read More:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2026\/04\/17\/2026-fifa-world-cup-power-rankings-11-14-japan-and-belgium\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">2026 FIFA World Cup Power Rankings: 11-14 Including Japan and Norway<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Due to spending his life pretending to be a character, some of Kaiser&#8217;s claims have been both confirmed and disputed by others who feature in the young striker&#8217;s journey, including the length of his career.\u00a0 Despite Carlos declaring a 26-year career, estimates are closer to 11 years.\u00a0 This is still an impressive number for someone who couldn&#8217;t move with a ball at his feet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Born in April 1963, a young Carlos Henrique Raposo always knew he wanted to hit the big time at the peak of Brazillian football culture.\u00a0 In his words, he was nicknamed Kaiser in reference to the nickname of Franz Beckenbauer, one of the world&#8217;s most acclaimed players at the time.\u00a0 However, some of his friends dispute this, saying it was in reference to the Beer brand, as their bottles were shaped quite wide.\u00a0 He began his youth career, but coaches and players alike soon realised that Carlos had a high level of fitness and not much else. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Showing no skill with a ball at his feet, his teammates would have scoffed at the idea of him developing a career through football.\u00a0 However, he managed to achieve his first professional contract at Mexican team Puebla after impressing in a fitness training session.\u00a0 Despite not playing a single game for them over his 3 months there, this gave him the ammunition to begin his long facade.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Method Behind the Madness<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After his spell in Mexico, Carlos returned to Brazil and gained powerful friendships through the Rio De Janeiro nightlife scene.\u00a0 This included professional footballers and sports journalists.\u00a0 With the former putting in good words with managers and the latter creating fake stories in the papers about his career, clubs would suck up these stories and sign the player on short trial contracts.\u00a0 After this, he would claim to be low on match fitness, so would only participate in regular fitness training for weeks, until he could pull off a fake hamstring injury.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Read More:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2026\/04\/05\/the-teams-we-wont-see-at-the-2026-world-cup-including-costa-rica-and-venezuela\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">The Teams We Won\u2019t See at the 2026 World Cup \u2014 Including Costa Rica and Venezuela<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Due to MRI scans not being common in those times, this worked a treat.\u00a0 He would run down the short term trial contract, usually lasting three months, and then repeat the process.\u00a0 He would also help his facade by using fake mobile phones to take non-existent calls about transfer offers.\u00a0 During this era, injuries were not easy to dispute, leading to owners and manager to often &#8220;take his word for it&#8221;.\u00a0 This is also true for his journalist accomplices, as alternative information was not readily available.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>A Documentary Deal<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have only just brushed the complexities and genius behind Kaiser&#8217;s long, established career.\u00a0 In 2018, the UK production company, Nods and Volleys Entertainment Limited, premiered a <a href=\"https:\/\/m.imdb.com\/title\/tt6823890\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">documentary<\/a> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">telling the tale of Carlos Kaiser.\u00a0 The film goes into detail on many aspects of Carlos&#8217; journey, including his hilarious introduction to the world of fame with his connection to Renato Gaucho, one of Brazil&#8217;s greatest players of the time. It also shows the aftermath of having a career as a conman, with the glitz and the glammer being merely temporary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An unbelievable real-life story, showing the ups and downs of the fascinating life of Carlos Henrique Raposo.\u00a0 It is a great insight into how one man fooled the footballing world from Mexico to Brazil and even with stints in Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Featied Image Credit<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>ImageBROKER<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet Carlos Kaiser, a Brazilian footballer whose magical ingenuity was not really found on the pitch but rather in avoiding being on the pitch in the first place. Carlos Kaiser &#8211; The Greatest Player to Never Kick a Ball Who Is Carlos Kaiser? Most football fans have had to accept the disappointing reality that no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3877,"featured_media":668897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":true,"sfio_embed_code":"<smartframe-embed customer-id=\"3ec16c2e89be0acadd2b088db7a33eb9\" image-id=\"imbrY3gXizly\" style=\"width: 100%;max-width: 6000px;aspect-ratio: 6000\/4000\"><\/smartframe-embed><!-- https:\/\/smartframe.io\/embedding-support -->","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1829,161],"tags":[621,227],"class_list":["post-593124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-international-football","tag-brazil","tag-south-america"],"modified_by":"Alex Richards, LWOF Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3877"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":668900,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593124\/revisions\/668900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}