Bayern Munich’s Kickbase Connection are trying their hand at being managers: what is behind Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels and Co’s takeover of Estrela Amadora?
Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels, Yann Sommer and Lucas Hernandez are among the investors who have taken over Portuguese top-flight club Estrela Amadora. Who brought the four former Bayern professionals together and who could serve as a model for the investment.
On 25 August 2026, reports emerged that former Bayern Munich players Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels, Yann Sommer and Lucas Hernandez, together with the investment group LEAD/ADvantage, had bought 90 per cent of the shares in Portuguese top-flight club Estrela Amadora for around €40 million.
The big names involved meant the central figure in the deal slipped a little under the radar. Estrela Amadora's new club president and CEO is Munich-born and only 35. Over the past ten years he grew into one of Bayern Munich's most important behind-the-scenes figures, and his departure this summer left as big a hole in the team behind the team as former team manager and head of strategy Kathleen Krüger, who is now chief executive at Hamburger SV.
Many football fans will probably recognise the youthful face of Johannes Mösmang, Estrela Amadora's new CEO. Whenever Bayern unveiled a new signing in recent years and showed him his new home and workplace, Mösmang would almost always appear in the picture at some point too.
What did Johannes Mösmang do at Bayern Munich?
He spent a long time as an integration officer, later became head player liaison officer and eventually also worked in scouting. His job covered everything from collecting new signings at the airport and showing them around to helping with dealings with the authorities, translating when needed and simply being there for them. Mösmang is said to have already been in touch via Instagram with some future signings before Bayern officials had officially made enquiries about them. The player liaison officer as a door-opener. Picture Mösmang as a good listener and a gifted player whisperer who understood very well how modern football works.
Now the former "girl for everything" at Bayern (Mösmang on Mösmang) is chief executive of a top-flight club in Portugal and negotiating player transfers with his former bosses. At the end of July, Lovro Zvoranek, who had been loaned out by Bayern Munich to Sturm Graz and Grasshoppers Zurich in recent seasons, joined Amadora for €1.5 million. Mösmang and the investor group were not yet officially in charge in the Lisbon suburb and the takeover had not yet gone through, but they are said to have been working at least in an advisory capacity since the start of July. The Germans are also said to have already been involved in the sale of centre-back Otavio to Eintracht Frankfurt for €5 million.
What does Johannes Mösmang have to do with Bayern legend Claudio Pizarro?
Mösmang hinted at the end of August, during his presentation in Amadora, that the ties with the Munich club would stay close. The exchange with Bayern would continue, "as has already happened with the arrival of Lovro Zvonarek", Mösmang said there.
He said it, Portuguese journalists noted with satisfaction, in fluent Portuguese. Mösmang speaks five languages fluently: as well as his mother tongues German and Spanish, he also speaks English, Portuguese and French, plus a little Italian. He has a German father and a Peruvian mother, and he also spent three years living in Sao Paulo in Brazil in his youth, where he played football. In the FC Sao Paulo academy, Mösmang played in central midfield and at right-back, among other positions, alongside former Tottenham star Lucas Moura. He did not make it as a professional, but football still became his profession.
The investors in Estrela Amadora once played in a Kickbase league
Early in Mösmang's time at Bayern Munich, one of his first jobs was helping the Portuguese Renato Sanches settle into life in Munich. Mösmang translated for Sanches, helped him with official appointments and played Playstation with him, among other things. Sanches, who was born in Amadora, ultimately failed to establish himself at Bayern even in two spells, and the midfielder once seen as a super talent and future Ballon d'Or candidate is now 29 and, after many twists and turns, has been without a club since this summer.
Mösmang quickly climbed the ladder at the record champions. The high-profile quartet who have now taken over Estrela Amadora are all linked by their Bayern Munich past. More importantly, they are all close to Mösmang. Social media is full of photos of Mösmang with Müller, Hummels and Hernandez. Since at least the pandemic, they have also all played in the same Kickbase league. In a podcast from 2021, Mösmang tells the creators of the fantasy football app about his career path and the Kickbase obsession of himself, Hummels, Müller and co. Now the Kickbase mates are taking it a step further, from fantasy football into real management.
Why is Liga Portugal so interesting for investors?
Why Portugal? The reasons are obvious. Liga Portugal, largely thanks to Benfica, Sporting and FC Porto, is not far off Europe's top five leagues. The sporting level is comparable with the Belgian and Dutch leagues and clearly above the Austrian Bundesliga. In UEFA's five-year ranking, the league currently sits sixth behind Ligue 1.
There is also a business model that is particularly attractive to investors, because Portuguese clubs have long seen themselves as training and selling clubs. The scouting and player-development structures are strong, and the Portuguese game also has a certain negotiating sharpness. "The ten most successful clubs outside Benfica, Porto and Sporting have together generated more than €700 million in positive transfer balance over ten years. That's no hidden gem, that's the country's business model," said Felix Krüger, once Max Eberl's right-hand man as sports coordinator at RB Leipzig and now president of Portuguese fourth-tier side Sintrense, recently to the Münchner Merkur.
Mösmang also laid out the advantages of the Portuguese league. There are "no restrictions on signing non-EU foreigners. That means: I can sign players from any part of the world". That is apparently the plan. Amadora are meant to become a springboard for talents from football development countries. This summer, though, the signings came first from Serbia (new captain Stefan Lekovic, 22, from Red Star Belgrade), Spain (Joan Jordan, 32, from Sevilla), France (Lucas Mincarelli, 22, from Montpellier) and Germany (alongside the already mentioned Zvoranek, Stuttgart loanee Jeremy Arvealo and South Korean Si-Woo Yang from Fortuna Düsseldorf II).
Who is behind the investment fund with which Thomas Müller, Mats Hummels and co bought Estrela Amadora?
So far, the start to the season has been solid: no defeats in the first four league games and ninth place with six points. The German investors have also given attendances a lift. An average of 4,691 fans have watched the two home games so far, compared with an average of 3,353 last season. By German standards that sounds almost cute, especially as more people sometimes turn up to watch Bayern's public training sessions and the Estadio Jose Gomes holds only 9,288. In Portugal, though, just under 5,000 fans is already enough for ninth place in the attendance table. Mösmang still sees far more room to grow. At the presentation he said they wanted to invest in infrastructure, including the stadium and training ground, but also areas such as scouting, the academy, data and AI.
Another key question is where else the German investment fund LEAD and its sports arm ADvantage, which completed the takeover, have put their money. Amadora are the first football club in the portfolio. Until now, the group had mainly invested in sports tech companies. The backers behind LEAD, meanwhile, come from the orbit of the Dassler family, the founding family of Adidas.
That is one more reason not to underestimate the project. Catching Benfica, Sporting and FC Porto, the big three of Portuguese football, on the pitch looks unlikely. But the places behind them are far from fixed. With five Portuguese clubs currently able to play in Europe, there is certainly room for an ambitious investor club.
What are Thomas Müller and Mats Hummels supposed to do at Estrela Amadora?
Como 1907 in Italy have shown in recent years how quickly a smartly run underdog can rise. When a British fund took over the club in 2019 with money from Indonesia, they were still in the fourth division. After three promotions and the arrivals of former players Cesc Fabregas, now also Como coach and wanted by half of Europe, and Thierry Henry, Como have now celebrated their Champions League debut against RB Leipzig.
Compared with Como, that looks like an old-school investor club. Hollywood celebrities have not exactly been queuing up to show their faces at the energy-drink footballers, and RB are not considered much of a tourist attraction either. And while RB Leipzig were founded primarily to promote a product, Como 1907 want to create a brand of their own and sell it. So far, with quite some success. And at RB, of course, it is not former world stars who are pulling the strings in football, let alone owning shares in the club.
At Amadora too, Müller, Hummels, Sommer and Hernandez are to be involved in the day-to-day running.
"We want expertise in all areas. Yann is responsible for the goalkeepers, Mats for the defence and Thomas for the attack. They primarily help with the evaluation of players and potential new signings," Mösmang told Bayerischen Rundfunk. The investors are supposed to say "whether they are for or against a signing. Of course, they also help in terms of network and public profile. They are also involved in talks with players. For them, it is a first level on which they can really test themselves in management."
Hummels backs that up. The investment is an important step, "to find out for myself which is the right job in football for me in future", he told Spiegel.
Among the fans, too, Como rather than Leipzig seems to be the model. "I won't convince any Portuguese person who supports Sporting, Benfica or Porto. But I believe I can convince many people outside Portugal to become Estrela fans," says Mösmang.
Have Estrela Amadora ever won a title?
Becoming fans' second-favourite club is what some clubs have been chasing recently. The public love a rise story, and that was true long before social media, even if the mechanics of social networks have intensified the trend. If a previously little-known club from Portugal suddenly started making waves, the thinking goes, entirely new possibilities would open up. It is the Bodö/Glimt phenomenon.
Like Bayern's first Champions League opponents this season, Amadora did not have to go too far back to find financial trouble. In 2010, the team were even withdrawn from competition altogether, and after a merger with a third-division club in 2020, the club got its old name back. The club have therefore not yet won an official title. Even the predecessor club of the same name has only one Portuguese cup win, in 1989/990, on its honours list. Plenty of room for improvement.
