Caroline Celico Denies ‘Too Perfect’ Divorce Claim Again, Threatens Legal Action Over Viral Kaká Misquote

More than ten years after her separation from former AC Milan and Brazil midfielder Kaká, Caroline Celico remains entangled in a viral online narrative she says was never rooted in truth. In a two-minute and 25-second video published this week to her 1.1 million Instagram followers, Celico categorically rejected the widely circulated claim that she ended her marriage because her ex-husband was “too perfect.”

“For a long time, I maintained silence but now I saw that I shouldn’t anymore,” Celico said in the clip. “No. I never said that I separated from Kaká, the father of my oldest children, because he was too perfect. This is a lie.”

According to Celico, the phrase originated not from her own words but from a misrepresentation by a journalist covering an interview she gave in 2022. “It came up in foreign tabloids as an interpretation by a journalist from an interview I gave in 2022 but those aren’t my words and never were,” she explained. “Their caption was replicated on countless websites both in Brazil and worldwide as if it were a quote from me, as if I said that. I never did.”

Celico described the personal toll the fabricated quote has taken, noting that it first reached her while she was heavily pregnant. “The story began to circulate when I was 9 months pregnant with my youngest son, taking care of my older children, working hard in my company, and then I wake up one beautiful day to read this lie,” she said. “I was very insulted, highly criticised. I received misogynistic and violent attacks. My image was used to sell courses, products, generate engagement and sexist speeches, and this is still happening, until now.”

This is not the first time the Brazilian entrepreneur and socialite has moved to correct the record. In April 2024, Celico addressed the controversy via an Instagram statement after the quote resurfaced across football and celebrity pages, describing it as “fake news” and “FAKE quotes.” At that time, she also emphasised that she and Kaká had established a stable co-parenting arrangement. “I got divorced almost 10 years ago,” she wrote in the 2024 post. “Me and my ex-husband found a healthy way to raise our children and I’m so grateful for this.”

Despite that earlier intervention, the misattributed quote continued to circulate and became increasingly embedded in online discourse around relationships and celebrity culture. Its persistence stemmed in part from Kaká’s public image — the 2007 Ballon d’Or winner has long been regarded as one of football’s most upstanding figures, making the notion of a marriage undone by excessive virtue an appealing, if false, narrative for social media audiences.

Kaká and Celico married in December 2005 and divorced in 2015 after nearly a decade together. They share two children and have both since remarried. In her latest statement, Celico stressed that the ongoing spread of the misquote has affected both families. “And being attacked, wronged, used for something you didn’t say is one of the most frustrating things there is. We have no ground even to defend ourselves and it wasn’t just me who was affected. Both of our families were affected without deserving this.”

Celico confirmed she is now moving beyond public statements and toward formal legal recourse. “So I decided to do what I should have done a long time ago; use legal instruments to defend myself and stop once and for all with this lie. And this stance is about my personal values which are honest, which do not give space to any type of misogyny or fake news,” she said. No further details regarding the specific legal steps being pursued have been confirmed at this stage.