Eri Johnson, one of Brazil’s most famous actors, will never forget the first time he met footballing royalty. “The first time I saw Kaiser,” he says, “he was crossing the street with such swagger that I thought, ‘That guy must be one of the best footballers in the world.’”

As a big football fan, Johnson had no idea who Kaiser was. But the way Renato Gaúcho greeted Kaiser made Johnson think he was in the presence of someone different. “I even regret not getting up back then. I apologise to Kaiser for that. I’d already met Pelé but I thought the way Kaiser walked was more distinguished. I should have got on my knees, because those legs were incredible!”

Kaiser studied the mannerisms, vernacular and attire of every footballer he met. He was like a boffin putting together the ultimate fake footballer – except he was also the boffin’s subject. “Man, he was like a celebrity,” says Maurício. “He’d walk on the tips of his feet looking straight ahead: ‘Hey, buddy. I’m Carlos Kaiser, you have to respect me …’ He had a professional way of talking which was so convincing that people would be scared of him. It was as if he was Pelé or Carlos Alberto Torres.”

Kaiser’s celebrity became a self-fulfilling parody. He had other tics, like bending his legs slightly as he walked. The most common was a caress of his mullet, which he would flick forward insouciantly from behind his ears. In the 1980s, the mullet was the twentysomething male’s weapon of choice. Kaiser’s was, by any standards, quite spectacular: a luscious, wavy follicular statement of intent. “His look was his trademark,” says Gutiérrez, one of the few non-footballers in Kaiser’s social circle back then. Somebody else’s trademark, sure, but let’s not split hairs. And Kaiser’s mullet was so majestic that it’s a surprise he didn’t have it insured.

Three decades later, he says the favourite item of clothing he has ever owned is his hair. “Life is marketing,” says Kaiser. “I had the air of a star player. I knew how to talk and sell an image. People who saw me thought, ‘The guy’s played in France, he’s been at Flamengo and Fluminense, he’s friends with Bebeto and Carlos Alberto. This guy is the real thing!’ It’s like Lionel Messi and David Beckham. Messi is a great player but the one who sells his image, products and everything is Beckham. Messi doesn’t sell; he doesn’t have the right way of talking. Carlos Kaiser does have it. I’ve appeared on several programmes in Brazil and I’m now attracting global attention. I don’t think it was ever to do with my quality as a player or as a lover. It’s because of my charisma.”

Kaiser, right, was close friends with many superstars of Brazilian football, including Carlos Alberto Torres. Photograph: We Are Buzzers

‘What can I do with a guy like that?’

As the clock moved past 3 am, Renato Gaúcho decided it was probably time to head into the town. The owner of one of Búzios’s main nightclubs had invited him; although Renato did not fancy it earlier in the evening, he changed his mind as restlessness and boredom kicked in. He knew the club would not close until most people were getting up for work, and so he wandered over with a couple of friends, cutting through the queue to approach the door. Renato didn’t queue or pay to get into nightclubs, so he was confused when a bouncer stepped across his path.

“Can I help?”

“The owner invited me along. I’m with a couple of friends. We came to have a look around the club.”

“But who are you?”

“I’m Renato Gaúcho.”

At this point the bouncer’s face displayed an expression of insulted intelligence.

“Do you think I look like an idiot?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not coming in because you can’t fool me.”

“Fair enough, you don’t have to know who I am but can you let the owner know I’m here.”

“You’re not fooling me and I’m not calling the owner because Renato Gaúcho is already in there. I’m not an idiot.”

“Oh really? Renato Gaúcho is already inside?”

“Yes. He’s in there now. You might look like him but you’re not coming in.”

Renato was both intrigued and affronted and asked if he might be able to see this Renato Gaúcho. After five minutes of negotiation, the bouncer walked him inside and pointed to a table in the VIP section – where Kaiser was holding court with a group of women.

Renato smiled knowingly, turned on his heels and left. “What,” he laughs three decades later, “can I do with a guy like that?”

‘Mini-Me’

Renato was amused rather than annoyed by Kaiser borrowing his identity. “He was my Mini-Me,” he says. “I started hearing all these stories: ‘This guy’s slept with women pretending to be you, he’s doing well out of your name.’ I said, ‘Whatever. If the guy’s doing well, let him. Unless he’s stealing or attacking somebody, let him do well out of it.’ He looked a lot like me. A hell of a lot. I would be at the team hotel the night before a game and people would say I had sneaked out and was with a woman. I had to explain that he was my double. I used to get in trouble at home with my wife. And it wasn’t me. It was Kaiser. And not even that would make me stop being friends with him.”

At a time when players were not constantly on television or in newspapers, there were more than enough similarities – height, mullet, physique, mullet, swagger, mullet, sunglasses, mullet – to fool casual football fans, whether they were nightclub bouncers or desirable females. ‘He styled his hair the same as Renato and if someone didn’t know much about football they would fall for it,’ says Alexandre Couto, who played with Kaiser at Ajaccio. ‘He did well: 1-0 to him.’

There are tens, maybe hundreds of women, who will go to their graves convinced they have had sex with Renato Gaúcho. “I used to go out with older women for money,” says Kaiser. “When America or Bangu were playing away from home, there was somebody who arranged it. The women wanted to date Renato but they paid to sleep with Kaiser.”

There are stories of an up-and-coming footballer called Renato Kaiser, whose mother – so the legend goes – had a soft spot for both men and christened him accordingly. “That’s the first time I’ve heard that,” chuckles Renato. ‘My technique and skill combined with Kaiser’s sweet talk? Oh my God. I really want to meet this kid. He’s going to be Superman.”

‘I only ever saw him play on video’

Renato was not the only person whose identity Kaiser borrowed. He would claim the achievements of other players with a similar name, showing newspaper cuttings to convince people he was a star. Kaiser had a different mental checklist to most before a night out: keys, wallet, newspaper cuttings. And he usually didn’t need the wallet.

In September 1985, a young Grêmio defender called Henrique scored the winning goal for Brazil in the Under-20 World Cup final in the USSR. Kaiser passed that off as his own. Henrique had lighter skin and blond hair, but that didn’t come across in match reports – especially as, with the tournament in the Soviet Union, most newspapers could not afford to send a photographer.

He also laminated articles about Henrique, the America striker, and took them around in his bumbag. He didn’t even care whether the reports were heavily critical, just so long as they showed he was a player. “The coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo took Carlos Henrique off for Carlos Alberto to give the attack more movement,” reads one of Kaiser’s cuttings. Another gives him a 4/10 rating, saying he had “no creativity and no purpose”.

Kaiser even managed to make a video of his greatest goals to impress women. He proudly boasted about one goal in particular, a bulldozing solo run by Vasco’s Henrique against Flamengo in 1987. Henrique, like Kaiser, was tall, thin and bemulleted; on a grainy video, a non-football fan would never be able to tell them apart. But they would hear the commentary: “GOL DE FANTASTICO! HENRIQUE!”

“I only ever saw him play on video,” says Valeria Gallo, an ex-girlfriend of Kaiser’s. “There was a very famous goal against Flamengo when he, how do you say it in football, resolved the game? He scored an amazing goal. Did you not know about that? I still have the video tape he gave me. It’s worth its weight in gold because not even he has it anymore. It was him. I’m almost sure it was.”

Kaiser: the Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football is in cinemas from Friday 27 July. The book, by Rob Smyth, is published by Yellow Jersey