Founder Ángel Monzón on filming every step, recruiting retired footballers as owners, and the long road from Portugal’s seventh tier to the 2042 Champions League.
Podcast Portugal meets Ángel Monzón, founder of KAIS FC, building a football club from scratch in Lisbon and filming every step from Portugal’s seventh tier.
Most people who dream of owning a football club never act on it. Ángel did. Originally from Madrid, he built his career in strategy consulting and investment banking before becoming chief of staff at a fast-growing startup that went on to a successful exit. While working in Dubai, he began researching opportunities across sport, media and consumer brands, and KAIS FC emerged from that search: a club reverse-engineered from a storytelling product, rather than a storytelling product bolted on to a club. The name, he explains, is loosely inspired by the Lisbon coast and chosen for its short, international sound.
At the heart of KAIS is the KAIS Story Series, a professionally produced, English-language weekly film of around twenty minutes documenting the creation of the club with complete transparency: the finances, the mistakes, the trials and the difficult conversations. Justin and Ángel discuss why human stories can drive deeper engagement than the match itself, drawing on Drive to Survive and Wrexham, and why recurring behind-the-scenes content gives sponsors far more to work with than a shirt or a hoarding.
Ángel explains why he chose Portugal over his native Spain. A new club in Lisbon enters at the seventh tier, compared with as low as the twelfth in Spain, making the route to the top flight considerably shorter. Lisbon’s growing international community, drawn by the city’s startup scene and quality of life, also offers a ready-made local audience for matches, events and community building.
The conversation covers the club’s €750,000 Founding Owners round, around two-thirds of which is already secured, and Ángel’s plan to bring Portuguese professional footballers nearing or entering retirement on board as equity-owning, hands-on partners rather than paid endorsers. Justin, who is pursuing a similar athlete-ownership model with the Wave Pool Surf League, shares his perspective on the challenges athletes face after their careers end, while Ángel is candid that a venture like KAIS is high risk and should only ever form a small part of a diversified portfolio.
Looking ahead, KAIS plans to enter the seventh tier in the 2027–28 season with a squad of fourth- and fifth-tier ability, with the first videos arriving in January 2027 and player trials and recruitment forming a central storyline before the first match in September. Ángel also outlines plans to lease a small, modern ground for the opening seasons, with a longer-term vision of an academy and a purpose-built stadium that doubles as an entertainment venue. The ambition is the Primeira Liga within ten years, with the 2042 Champions League as the club’s North Star, powered by a scalable media business, data-driven recruitment and professional management in the mould of Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth.
Podcast Portugal is proud to be an official fan of KAIS FC, and one of the very first. Follow the journey from the beginning:
Watch Episode 0 and subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kaisfc
Read the weekly KAIS FC newsletter: https://kaisfc.substack.com/
Follow Ángel’s daily updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelmonzonmorales/
Visit the club and apply to become a Founding Owner: https://kaisfc.com