Citation Needed - Carlos Kaiser

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Carlos Henrique Raposo (born 2 April 1963), commonly known as Carlos Kaiser, is a Brazilian con artist and former footballer who played as a striker.[citation needed] Although his abilities were far short of professional standard, he managed to sign for numerous teams during his decade-long career. He never actually played a regular game, the closest occurrence ending in a red card whilst warming up, and hid his limited ability with injuries, frequent team changes, and other ruses.[1]

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pop culture moms, find it wherever you get your podcasts. ["The Good Morning America Show Theme"] Hello and welcome, citation needed. A podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnik and I'll be faking it till I'm making it tonight, but I'll need some gents ready to pound the pitch. First up, a man who always works stoned and a fellow who always stones work, Noah and Tom.

That may no sense at all, but sure. It makes way more sense if you work stoned, man. Thank you And also joining us tonight the puns been making this shit look easy well I'll resent them from the bench Cecil and he it's a rivalry on this podcast. It's the quips and the bloods On Mosa Nostra. Oh, okay. No, no, we didn't. That's pretty solid. That's pretty solid on the spot. Now, before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons.

Patrons, without you, we'd be discovered as the frauds we are, but your money keeps the ruse up. And for that, we're eternally grateful. And if you'd like to be part of our cover, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Tom, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today? Today we'll be discussing Carlos Kaiser, and I am not at all jealous.

And Noah, you scope this story out. Are you ready to give us the lowdown? Sure, let's kick things off. So who is Carlos Kaiser? Carlos Kaiser is the nickname of Carlos Henrique Raposo, a Brazilian footballer who had an unexceptional career that ran from 1979 to 1992. And why are you making me listen to a story about an unexceptional Brazilian soccer player? Oh, Eli's Linguistics episode, he's going to try to convince us that unexceptional and

soccer player isn't a redundancy. Holy shit. Holy shit. Yeah, it's a roundabout. Holy shit. What we're doing. Yeah, most of the world hates you. Yikes, dude.

I'm really started off hating me. No, that's fair, that's fair, right. You're right. Here's the rest of the world, here's a grenade. Yes. Yes. So, okay, the reason I'm doing it though, for realsies, is because when I did my ice bowl

episode I made an offhand comment about how I'd be happy to do a story about the sport that the rest of the world calls football if somebody could provide me with a football story that was as interesting as my football story. And within like seven minutes of that episode coming out friend of the show Michael Marshall messaged me a link to Carlos Kaiser's Wikipedia page. Okay, but if Carlos Kaiser is unexceptional, why is he worth a citation needed episode? Because he's exceptionally unexceptional. In fact, over the course of his 13 year professional career, he played for as many as 11 different football clubs and scored a record setting

or at the very least record tying zero goals. In fact, he made a record tying zero appearances and there is in fact, no evidence anywhere in the world that he can even play football other than the fact that he made his living at it for at least 13 years. Oh, didn't work for 13 years, still got paid a hero's tail. I'm in. Right? Oh, love it.

Okay, so before I jump into this guy's story, I wanna make it clear that he's a fucking liar. And as is so often the case with fucking liars, it's really hard to piece together the truth about him. Especially because at a certain point in his career, he came clean about all the lying that he'd done, but then he lied about all the lying So now like I'm gonna do my best to disentangle the truth from all the bullshit I'm not Eli over here, but take everything I say

In this essay with a grain of salt accept the part about Eli that I meant. Thank you. Wait Exaggerations no one you can trust me on this or I don't have a PhD in organic chemistry But I am proficient in Nunchaku. That's actually the strength reel. Is that about him? I'm medium at Nunchaku. No, I've seen you. He's proficient.

Proficient is nice. No, that's medium. Okay, so Carlos Henrique Raposo was born a day late. I'm really bad at Nunchaku, actually, I'm being honest. I hurt myself every time. All right, so Carlos Henrique Raposo was born a day late. I'm really bad at Nunchaku actually, I'm being honest. I hurt myself every time. All right, so Carlos Henrique Raposo was born a day late on April 2nd of 1963, and like pretty much every Brazilian boy growing up in the 60s and 70s, he was obsessed with soccer, which I'm mostly going to remember to call football during this essay. And Carlos was a very athletic kid,

so he played football. And he was pretty good at the parts that didn't involve the ball, which granted are not very many of the parts. But like when it came to like running up and down the field and having the stamina to be high energy late in the game, he excelled. And when you're a kid, that's enough to make the team. My selling point as a soccer player is that I continually run in circles like that one dog at the dog park. Yeah, right. Right. That's fun. My selling point was that if I run more than 18 yards, I'll need a, I'll need a vomit break. So I was actually

the perfect goalie. I played goalie. Yeah, really born for that. So by all accounts, Carlos was also a very likable guy. So he was the kind of guy you kind of wanted to make room for on the bench, even if he wasn't really good enough to play. And that's going to become more and more important the further into the story we get. Jesus, Cecil was right. You're describing a Labrador retriever, Noah. I am. He runs around being likeable. Sounds like he's the heart and soul of the soccer team to me, guys. Maybe Noah's wrong on this one, it's not a thing, that's just here, whether or not I brought in another extrinsic guy. Your dad did love you.

He did. No, of course, at the time that Carlos has grown up, footballers are the rock stars in his country, and among the biggest rock stars in the world of Brazilian football of that day, was a guy named Renato Portolupi, also known as Renato Gaucho, which means cowboy. Now, he's still famous in Brazil now, I guess he's a he's a well-respected coach. But back in the 80s, he was a god and he bore at least a passing resemblance to one Carlos Henrique Reposo. So Carlos got in the habit of just

pretending to be Renato. Like he would just go to malls in Rio and start signing autographs as Renato. OK, I got to admit, if a marshmallow ever gets famous for being dropped on the floor of a barbershop, I'm totally going to do the same thing. So apparently, Carlos was impersonating Renato so damn much that Renato heard about it. Right? So he was like having sex with women who thought he was Renato. But Renato was famously laid back and he was just like, hey, if the dude's getting away with it, have at it.

In fact, in a story later recounted by both men, at one point, Carlos talked his way into an exclusive nightclub by pretending to be Renato, only for Renato to show up like an hour later and have to convince the bouncer he was himself. Now in Carlos's version of the story, the two have a laugh and then share a drink. In Renato's version of the story, Carlos spends the rest of the night hiding in the bathroom stall at this nightclub. But apparently pretending to be Renato gave Carlos a taste of the life of a footballer. So he started thinking bigger, not get good at that sport bigger, but still pretty big. So he decided to become a professional footballer. Now, admittedly, that's hard to do when you suck at the sport, but he had three things working in his favor.

One is that he looked the part. He was in great physical shape. He was built like a striker. He had all the swagger of a star. The second was that in the world of professional football in the 70s and 80s, it was fractious as all hell. And there was just like a dozen competing international organizations in a hodgepodge of rivalries and information sharing. And the third was that he was from Brazil. And every football club in the fucking world was falling all over themselves in an attempt to sign Brazilian players.

So the first club he managed to con into signing him appears to be a football team world was falling all over themselves in an attempt to sign Brazilian players. So the first club he managed to con into signing him appears to be a football team in Mexico. And I say appears to be because it's really hard to tell what is and isn't bullshit in his story, right? Because before he was ever signed to any team, he was already lying and saying that he'd been signed to a bunch of other teams. And sometimes, at least according to his detractors, he would show up with fake IDs and documents to prove that he used to be a player for this or that team. I'm not seeing your McDonald's summer job

on your professional CV. Um... I see. Now, so here's the basic layout of his scam. He would show up with his fake and then later real documents showing that he'd played for all these other clubs, and then he'd use those credentials to get a workout. Now, in a workout, he would excel because a lot of that is just like, how fast can you run? How many wind sprints can you

do? How many push-ups can you do? And Carlos was actually really good at stuff like that. And when you combine that with his unbearable levels of self-confidence, it was really easy for people evaluating him to kind of miss the fact that he was entirely incompetent every time his foot had to hit a ball. Okay, so you guys know when you're playing tag as a kid, somebody gets close, you do the twisted my ankle free time out thing. I'm going to become a professional soccer player. Spoilers. Do that when the ball gets close.

Yeah, no, I feel like we're making a lot of excuses here for why the find good football players guys failed to notice that they hired a not good football player. Okay, to be fair, Tom, paying attention to football is second only to paying attention to baseball in the world's most boring job. How long could you? I rescind my making room in the doghouse. Okay, so to be clear, other players noticed that he sucked right away. There are all these interviews with his former teammates going like, yeah, he couldn't even

stand around in a circle and do the hacky sack thing with a soccer ball. He sucked. But, but he, but he had a gift for fooling management, mostly because he walked the walk, right? Because everybody knew that if you were good enough at football, you were really, really cool. And Carlos was really, really cool. So he must be good enough at football.

Feels like showing up for the lumberjack competition and grabbing a tree instead of an ax. You had to do that. Okay, it's crazy that it worked for him, but I kind of love how the social contract of 10 year olds continues working at like the pro level. It does. It's amazing. Right.

But at least before you could Google a motherfucker. But in addition to being cool, he was also amazingly full of shit and he wasn't afraid to fan the flames of his celebrity with just blatant con artistry. As an amazing example, he was in the habit of getting calls on his cell phone in the locker room where, for example, some British football club was trying to recruit him. These moments were lives to the third power because, as you might have guessed, there was nobody on the other side of the phone call, but that was at least partly because it was a toy phone. So we're talking about the 1980s, right? When very few people had cell phones

and they were absurdly expensive, but you could get a realistic looking toy one, you know, pretty fucking quick. So it also, he would conduct these phone calls in like English or French or whatever, based on who was supposedly trying to recruit him. But he didn't speak either of those languages. Come on. He only spoke Portuguese. So he would just speak in like pseudo French and pseudo English. He actually got caught doing it once because some medical guy who spoke English was like, dude, you're just saying nonsense syllables and song lyrics.

I know. Okay. Now I'm picturing him in the locker room just saying the never gonna give you up lyrics into a brightly colored Fisher Price phone, but he's doing it super cool. You know, he's so close to that.

And look, for those of you at home wondering how it's possible he got away with that, I want you to imagine that someone at your job started speaking a fake language. How eager would you be to engage with them via correction? Yeah, right. But for the most part, he managed to make his scam work. He would impress enough with his bluster and conditioning to get himself signed to a short-term contract.

And as soon as the ink was dry on that, he would get injured. Usually he would pull a hamstring since the technology of the day made it basically impossible to verify whether a hamstring was pulled. And then just as he was getting outside the window of that injury, he would fake another one. Okay. I'm really confused. I thought you said he wasn't good at soccer. No, if his contract was long enough, he actually had this whole thing, like he had this long term thing where he would fake a nonspecific pain that would eventually turn out to be a dental thing because he knew a dentist that was willing to lie for him.

Yeah, it turns out the thing that was hurting my leg was my molar. The roots are like really deep guys, they went all the way down. All right. Apparently me and Eli had the same doctor's note to avoid the mile run in Jim Carpenter. That's true. We did. We both had a dentist with an accent. Yeah, right, right.

So you have to keep in mind that one of the biggest advantages to this is that even if people suspected that he was bullshitting them in a way that Tom's kind of already alluded to, it's almost never in their best interest to admit it. Because first of all, they have to admit that they're so fucking stupid that they signed a football or they can't play football, right? But also, once you admit that he can't play football, you have no chance in hell of selling his contract.

But if you just play along with the scam, there's at least some chance you can pawn him off on some other unsuspecting team rather than keeping him. Okay. It's like owning a truth social stock. It's the sporting equivalent of truth social stock. So you can go out and you can be like, you know, hey, we got this young phenom of a player. We signed him.

He got hurt and man, we sure would love to keep him on our, on our payroll here, but we just can't afford it. We'll give him to you guys for $90 and a sip of what are you drinking there? Now surely throughout all of this, Carlos is probably thinking he's at least safe, right? Because like even if he gets found out, he hasn't committed any crimes. It's not illegal to not be as good at football as you let on. Thank God. You're right. But that distinction doesn't matter all that much if the people you're conning aren't the type to settle their disputes in a court of law.

And that's where we meet Castro de Andrade. He was a short tempered crime boss who owned a Brazilian team called Bangu Atlético, or just Bangu Atlético or just Bangu and as of 1985 that gangster was the guy who owned Carlos's contract. All right well looks like Castor is about to find out that breaking someone's kneecaps isn't quite the threat for some people that it is for others. So we'll take a quick break for a little apropos of nothing. And then we play Madrid on Wednesday. Oh, that'll be a tough one.

Yeah, definitely. Hey, what's up, team? Good hustle out there. Yeah man, thanks. Oh, I wish I was out there with you all on the court. You mean like pitch, man? On the pitch? Chase, indeed I do right on the pitch. Do you? I feel like you spent the whole season on the bench, man. Indeed I have.

Curse this hamstring of mine! That's your calf that you're holding. Yes, yes it is. So great is my pain. I feel my hamstring all the way up here in my calf. Your hamstring is above your calf though on your leg. It certainly feels that way sometimes, brother. Okay, look man, you've been sitting on the bench like the whole season. You have all these weird injuries.

It just kind of seems like you're making it up. Gentlemen, look, I know things look bleak, but this is what our enemies want. They want us to doubt each other. They want us to doubt ourselves. They're afraid of us because in our hearts, we are brothers. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I guess we are brothers.

Now let's get out there and score a home run! Do you mean goal? No my friend, I only go. Okay. And we're back. When we left off, Carlos had faked it and made it. But we know this story happened, so something has to change eventually. Tell us what happened, Noah. Okay, so by 1985, Carlos has played for four soccer teams in three countries, probably.

Or sorry, he actually hasn't played for any of them, but he's been under contract with all of them. And somewhere along the way, he had picked up the nickname Kaiser. Now there are three competing claims as to where it comes from. According to Carlos Kaiser himself, it's because people who saw him play in Europe compared him to legendary German footballer Franz Beckenbauer, a guy that was nicknamed Der Kaiser and has pretty much universally agreed to be one of the greatest football players of all time. So it definitely wasn't that one.

No, it's actually because his limb from his torn hamstring disappears as he walks smugly away from the clubhouse. Also, very crucially, Beckenbauer was a defender and Carlos was a striker, so he didn't even pick the right position for his weird, stupid life. No, he said it's because they said he ran like a dear Kaiser. But yeah, so the second person with legs. Right. Exactly. What? The second and far more likely origin of his nickname was that it referred to a kind of beer called Kaiser beer that was sure sold in a short squat bottle. And he was kind of

short and squat. That's the version of the story that many of his former teammates tell. But there's a third version that I just made up, but it seems way more plausible, which is that the nickname didn't come from any fucking where that was just something that he bestowed upon himself. And there was no origin beyond him thinking it sounded bad. It could be a reference to the bread used in a sentence. Watch Kaiser roll his ankle again. Kaiser roll his ankle. So now, but however he managed it, Carlos Kaiser had made enough of a repusation to

wind up on the radar of this notorious crime boss, Castor de Andrade, known as Dr. Castor because everybody in this fucking story has a nickname. So Dr. Castor met with him, decided that he was going to be a star, and he signed him to a contract. And to give you an idea of this guy's reputation, Castor's reputation, there's a story that almost certainly isn't true, but it doesn't matter when you're talking about a person's reputation that one of his players was injured and Castor thought he was exaggerating the extent of the injury. So he pulled out a gun that he always had on him, shoots the ground a foot away from

the player and the dude jumps away and Castor goes, well, obviously you can still move fast. I guess you'll be good to play tomorrow night, huh? Okay. Not much in the way of a medically diagnostic test, but a hell of a motivational speech. You got to give it that. Right. Yeah. But running up and down the sideline shooting at his feet must have been exhausting. Reloading again. Right. So anyway, so now that guy owns Carlos Kaiser's contract. And at first, Kaiser does

his normal con with the injuries. And at the same time, he ingratiates himself with Castor, right? The one big talent the guy had is that he was really good at making people like him so before long he's got castor thinking of him as the son he never had but the other talent he had was being a fucking con artist so he did that too he convinced the owner what a superstar he was by like bribing people to chant kaiser kaiser during like public practices and shit okay so it might seem like a guy grabbing his ankle in fake pain and then getting a big chant from the fans in the crowd at a practice. That'd be weird. But again, we're talking about professional soccer. So I guess.

No, exactly. All right. So inevitably, Carlos runs out of injury excuses and Castor wants his potential superstar in the game. So he calls the team manager one day in a rage and he says, Hey, I want Kaiser to at least be on the bench in the next game. So they track him down. He's out at a nightclub because that's where he always is. It's like fucking four o'clock in the morning.

They find him and they say, All right, hey man, you got to be at the game tomorrow. He's like, I can't play. I've been up all night clubbing. And they're like, you don't have to play. Castor just wants to see that you're at least on the bench. I'm sorry. He wasn't even riding the bench before. He was faking playing a sport and he didn't even have to watch the sport. I love this man. I love it so much. Yeah.

Does he offer a course cause me and Tom are in, is that what you're saying? I'm sure he'd be happy to charge you for one, but no, he doesn't. He's actually a personal trainer these days that only works with women. So he goes directly from the nightclub to the stadium and he's sitting there on the bench, but that gets the fans all excited

cause they've been hearing for months about how this guy who's going to be a superstar every chances name And he's gonna give their team a fighting chance and here he is finally on the bench So they start chanting for him the teams down to and oh Castors like what the fuck let's at least give the fans what they want So he calls down to the coach and he's like put Kaiser in so they tell Kaiser hey go warm up He does one arm stretch, grabs his ankle, starts rolling. So, all right.

So clearly he's thought he's he's done all the fake injuries he can get away with. So he steps up to loosen up. He's in full fucking panic. He knows the instant he goes into the game, the gig is up. And this notorious and perpetually armed club owner is going to know that he's been conning him the whole time. So while he's warming up, a couple of fans start talking shit to him, and they call him an anti-gay slur because he wears his hair long. And he's like, there's my out. So he leaps over the fence and he starts punching the shit out of that fan. That was smart.

Before he can even make it on the field, he's got a red card and he's been ejected from the fucking game. Wait a minute. He doesn't have to play soccer. He still gets paid. He avoids even watching the game and he gets to beat up bigots. Yes. I am a little hard right now.

I didn't even bring pumpkin pie and donuts. Well, you can. So he goes back. He goes back to the locker room after his injection. Danish instead. Weird. I'm going to eat the Danish. No, OK. Danish would make you look so much bigger, though. So, OK.

So he goes back to the locker room after his injection. Now he's warmed his way out of playing again, but he's not like out of trouble because Castor is fucking furious. All the teammates are like clearing out from behind him in case the bullet passes all the way through his fucking lung. So after the game, Castor burst into the locker room and he's like, what the hell was that? And Kaiser's like, look, I get that you're mad and you have every right to be, but just

hear me out. I could not stand by and tolerate those people saying all those terrible things about you. He's like, he's like, Dr. Castor, you're like a father to me. And they were calling you a thief and a criminal. And I just, I couldn't help myself. I had to defend you. And at least according to the testimony we have, Castor is so flattered by that, that he ends up extending Kaiser's fucking contract. This is like every fucking butt weasel that avoids a layoff by playing racquetball

with the boss motherfuckers. Okay. Some people do it well. Like when Tom has to go on golf outings with his grownup job, he spends the entire time telling everybody he hates them, but they just think he's ready. So like, I'll enjoy that. Now, of course, flattered or no, Castor still wants rid of the guy.

He's expensive baggage. So when he found himself heavily indebted to a different Brazilian gangster football club owner, he was like, hey, instead of paying you, what if I just loaned you a bunch of my best players for a season so that you could win a championship? And the other crime boss this guy named Emil Pinero. He's like, I love this FICA idea So he agrees to take several actual good players, but included in this package is Kaiser It's like a Facebook marketplace ad after a divorce just like 80 inch flat screen five dollars But you have to take fucking TV stand made of samurai swords. My idiot ex husband.

You have to take that too. That actually sounds pretty great. I'll take it. That sounds fucking awesome. I would, I would buy that in a second. Sarah posted the. I don't know. I'll break this tea.

Now Pinero is an interesting dude in his own right. He's a short guy with a bad hair piece that notoriously comes loose when he's angry, but he also, and this is far more what he's known for, had a very early version of a penis implant. So this was back before there was such a thing as Viagra. There was no pharmaceutical treatment for impotence, but you could get a penis implant that allowed you to sort of pump up your dick in order to mimic an erection. And apparently- Pump up your dick.

Yeah, yeah, right, no. So it's the anthem. And apparently- Inflation adjusted. Nice. But apparently Pinero had one of these, but not like a good one. It was like an early attempt at the inflatable erection. And yes, this is actually relevant to

the story. Okay. Reebok pump sneakers have a weird backstory. Right. So, so, so one of the hard pivot. All right. So one of the few things that Kaiser was generally good at was wooing women, right? So he was a ladies man. He had a talent for gathering up women for the rest of the club. And what that mostly meant practically was that he just knew a bunch of sex workers, but he quickly became like the pimp for the team. And that included finding women from for Pinero and then warning them about his weird inflatable erection that he was going to have to like pump his ball sack or whatever before sex. That was apparently that is that that's actually how they were.

Wow. But the pump was in the ball. Yeah, as a third one, the pump was in the ball. Where did the pee go? So apparently Panero was like too self-conscious to tell women about that himself. So basically he kept Kaiser on the payroll for like seasons just to explain his dick to his would-be fuck partners. This is actually Congress's job to get the American working class ready for the billionaires.

Okay, don't worry about condoms, but bring a tire gauge. I feel like you just put like an automatic one on there and just, but bring a tire gauge. Is that what she said? That's what I, you know. I feel like you just put like an automatic one on there and just do it with a clapper. You just like, oh, there you go. There you go. That's a later model though. They didn't have that one back in the 80s.

You hate to go to the gas station though. That's the one that's embarrassing. Like if you go to football games all the fucking time, you can't have that one. If you clap her cheeks though, then it starts to deflate. You're like, no, do it again. Yes, yes. Why do you keep saying the clap? That feels weird. You can't have that. If you clap your cheeks, though, then it starts to deflate. You're like, no, do it again. Why do you keep saying the clap? That feels weird.

That's not so. No. So but that kind of shit, though, that is as much of an explanation of how we manage to keep this con going as anything else. Like when I was a younger man, I was the member of a lot of bands where everybody was like way too good musically for me to be in the band. But I always had the best drug connections. So they kept me around. Right? So like Carlos Kaiser, he didn't do drugs. He didn't, he didn't drink, but he had hella connections when it came to women. But also he was just a fun guy to party with. He always knew where the best clubs were going to be, where the best biggest parties were. He also came in handy when you needed a scapegoat. Like at one point, one of his teammates got into a fight at a nightclub and was going to face a suspension by the

league if he got caught. So Kaiser stepped in because he was always looking for a good suspension and he pretended it was him that took the punishment. And like the, and the guy, the teammate was just like, Oh, what a great guy taking my suspension for me. I like that he's renowned for being a ladies man, but with sex workers, everyone with cash is a ladies man when you're paying the ladies. Yeah. McDonald's gives me a burger every time I order and pay for one. I don't have an E-net McDonald's gives me a burger every time I order and pay for one. I don't have an McDonald's

Burgerman all the time Wait, but again, this is the same guy that's paying ball boys to get you know fans to yell Kaiser Kaiser Kaiser during the practices You're just doing the same shit with sex workers. No, this is my friend. I know her she looks she just likes you Yeah with sex workers. No, this is my friend. I know her. She just likes you. Yeah. So for years, despite being perpetually suspended or injured, he managed to cling to the edges of the locker rooms. He told good stories. He made friends pretty easily. So when one team would cut him, invariably some friend that had moved on to another team would get him a tryout at that new team and he could start the con cycle all over again. This is genius. Like truly, I can't believe it worked for 13 years.

So it worked. And technically it worked for a lot longer than that. Yeah. But so once he got in, he could very often keep his position just by being a handy guy to have around the locker room. Hell, at one point he got a six month contract with the team and his whole fucking. Like holes in the walls in the locker room. Yeah.

Tom, it's not much like that's not much of an exaggeration. He got a contract one time where his whole job was just to try to keep one of their actual star players from drinking. Yeah, we tried that with Heath once, but he kept trying to kill himself, so we stopped. It was adorable. Like a little mouse.

He likes projecting. Yes. No, of course, he never made big money on any of these contracts. He was always at or close to the league minimum. But given his pension for self-promotion, he was still able to parlay these relatively minor signings into a major profit. He basically got himself on every football TV show in Brazil and became this incredibly recognizable face of the game, despite, again,

never having fucking played it. But, but he knew all the right people. He had this outsized personality that TV shows love, and he had the kind of perpetual availability that actual footballers who have to show up at practice and gameplay can only dream of. But ultimately, it was his penchant for TV coverage that got him caught, because when he was on TV, they would want him to tell stories about his time playing football, which he didn't actually have.

So he would just tell stories of shit that other players did. And eventually people would be like, man, that was a different guy. Or if he timed it bad enough, man, that was me. So eventually people started to catch on and both the managers and the TV producer stopped calling him. So that's when he sold his story to a production company, got a documentary made about himself called Kaiser, the greatest footballer never to play football, where he greatly exaggerates how successful his fucking con was even to a great, to a degree that it almost qualifies as a separate con. He's my best friend.

Amazing. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, no illusions, what would it be? I learned that I am a professional synchronized swimmer. Indeed you are, Noah. Are you ready for the quiz? Damn right I am. All right, Noah.

Of the other nicknames for Carlos Kaiser, which one is my favorite a Lio messy Chilean Mbappe C Diego Marifona Conal Dino or over pay lay Or E. That's a good one. Over Pele. Baaaam! Pele!

Amazing. I love that you had to do this with only the soccer players that our audience might rate for actually making nice and still got five of them. I'm going to go with E though, over Pele. Correct. Well done. Okay Noah, what was the nickname of the other guy that skated along with the team and didn't get playtime?

A. On Striker. B a mid builder, C a cyst or D. C Y S T or D or D goalie, C-Y-S-T. Or D! Or D! Goalie pollie. Alright, anything that gets the high pitched laugh out of Heath has to be right. It is C-A-C-I-S-I-D. It's correct. Alright Noah, many might view Carlos Kaiser as a liar and a con man, but I don't. Why?

A. He would have had the exact same name as the guy in the movie. Alright Noah, many might view Carlos Kaiser as a liar and a con man, but I don't. Why? A. He would have had the exact same career if he had just played baseball. B. Or been a junior back end developer. C. That's right, I said a junior developer. Sure, one out of fifty of you are competent, but the rest of you are just chatgy BTs stuck on sexual harasser mode. D. You don even know C plus plus you big phonics. It's her.

Wow. The correct answer is not what happened. There's definitely not asking for an elaboration. So I'm going to go a the baseball one. That is correct. All right, Noah, what is pin heroes favorite song? Hey pumped up Dicks. Go no further, Tom.

It is a perfect joke. Yeah. All right. Well, Tom said Pumped Up Dicks, which means he's the winner. All right, Cecil, let's pump up your dick. You can go next. Caliente, let's do this. Pump the dick. It's the middle ball, by theiente. Let's do this. Oh, bump the dick.

It's the middle ball, by the way. It's the middle ball. Yeah, be careful. You gotta, don't get that wrong. That's right. All right, well, for Tom, Noah, Heath, and Cecil, I'm Eli Bosnic. Thank you for hanging out with us this week. Today, we'll be back next week and by next week. What the fuck are you doing?

I'm keeping it. I'm keeping it. Oh, you're keeping it alright. It was all written by the LLM that Eli coded. Yeah for the paramedics. Alright well for Tom, Noah, Heath and Cecil, I'm Eli Bosnick. Thanking you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then Cecil will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then you can listen to us on our podcast In the Places with Your Faces. And if you'd like to help keep this show going you can listen to us on our podcasts in the places with your faces And if you'd like to help keep this show going you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod Or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. You did that weird. And if you'd like to get in touch with us check out past episodes connect with us on social media or check the show notes Be sure to check out citation pod.com

Check out citation pod.com. So Carlos, what's this big controversy you wanted to tell us about? Yeah, and what is it? Well, gentlemen, at the end of the last half, I caught one of our enemy players choosing his hands on the ball. Um, yeah, yeah, man, that's the goalie. He's allowed to do that Hey who wants to have sex with some prostitutes, huh? Sounds great man, but they better know about my penis everybody knows about your penis man. It's a thing

We all know