Carlos Kaiser. (Twitter)

The role of a striker is to score goals. Goals which will help the team win matches and tournaments. If s/he fails to perform the act properly, it means the player is not suitable for the position and teams opt to sell them away. But there was one who defied all the common notions which are expected from a striker and still managed to play for 26 years in nine different clubs. Meet ‘The Farce Footballer’. Carlos Henrique Raposo commonly known as Carlos Kaiser is a former footballer who played as a striker for various clubs in the 70s, 80s and early 90s.

The Brazilian although was part of 10 clubs in his long footballing career, he never really played a regulation game and also hid his limited ability with false injuries. Despite his fraud, Carlos managed to get signed for teams across Europe, US and South America. He showed fake videos of his ‘best goals’ and paid ‘fans’ to chant his name to persuade clubs he was a true star.

He also tricked many by befriending journalists who would write fake stories about him. In one newspaper article, it read that he had such a great time at Puebla (one of the Mexican clubs Carlos played for) that he was offered the Mexican citizenship and play for their national side.

After returning to Brazil, he became friends with legendary footballers such as Carlos Alberto Torres, Ricardo Rocha and Renato Gaucho. According to reports, he did this to have a better network to be recommended whenever he wanted to switch to a new club.

He also used toy mobile phones which were unpopular back in the days, to create fake conversations in foreign languages or to reject fake offers. He did this to create an image that he is a hot target in the market. He always preferred signing short time contracts so that he won’t be caught, while he would only train with the team and feign injuries so as to miss match days.

In 1986, he moved to Europe to join French Division 2 club Gazelec Ajaccio. During his presentation, the club arranged a training session with fans and in the fear of being caught he shot all the balls in the crowd and even kissed the club’s badge. He then returned to Brazil where he joined Bangu and he again faked his injury.

However, the club’s major sponsor Castor de Andrade was frustrated of seeing Kaiser out of form and demanded that he gets selected. Initially, at the bench, Castor told the coach to play Kaiser as his team was losing by 2–0 and sent the player to warm up. Again afraid of being caught, he saw a group of supporters giving the stick to the players and started to fight them so that he was sent off before even entering the field.

After the match, Kaiser lied to the patron that the supporters were calling his father a thief. Kaiser was forgiven and earned a six-month extension.

His last club was Vasco da Gama, and the other teams he appeared for were Puebla, Botafogo, Flamengo, Gazélec Ajaccio, Bangu, Fluminense, El Paso Sixshooters América (RJ) Guarany Futebol Clube.