Antonis Tsikakis

Antonis Tsikakis is a strength & conditioning coach and performance practitioner with extensive experience across first-team and academy football, specialising in load management, rehabilitation/return-to-play, injury prevention, and long-term athlete development (LTAD).

He is currently 1st Team Strength & Conditioning Coach at Al Wasl FC (Nov 2025–present, Dubai), supporting match recovery processes, pre-training activation, individual player work, and assisting the Head Fitness Coach. Prior to stepping into the first-team environment, he served as U23 Head Fitness Coach at Al Wasl FC U23 (Jul 2024–Nov 2025), leading daily physical preparation, periodisation planning, GPS monitoring, workload control, and rehab/injury prevention workflows.

Before his move to the UAE, he held 1st Team Head Fitness Coach roles in Greece with AEL FC (Oct 2023–Jul 2024), AO Chania F.C. (Jan 2023–May 2023), and Asteras Tripolis F.C. (Jul 2022–Dec 2022), consistently focusing on performance readiness, training monitoring, and return-to-play integration.

A major part of his background is academy development at Olympiacos FC, where he progressed through roles including Strength & Conditioning Coach (U17/U19) and then Head of Performance – Academy Department (Jul 2021–Jun 2022). In that leadership post, he aligned the academy physical development programme (U10–U19), managed staff and interns, delivered individualised gym/pitch programming, led monitoring of training load and readiness, coordinated testing and athlete records, and supported academy nutrition systems.

Alongside his club work, he also contributed to education as a Lecturer with the International Soccer Science & Performance Federation (Sep 2020–Apr 2025), delivering content linked to applied performance practice. Academically, he holds a BSc in Physical Education & Sports Science from Democritus University of Thrace (2008–2012).