Maximilian Lankheit

Maximilian Lankheit is a senior high-performance leader working across football medicine, performance, and organisational strategy. He currently serves as Senior Medical and Performance Manager at European Football Clubsin Nyon, Switzerland (April 2025–present), operating at a European-level platform where medical, performance, and operational standards intersect with club benchmarking and best practice. Alongside this role, he has been a long-standing ISSPF Professor (January 2020–present), delivering applied lectures that connect high-performance theory with the realities of football environments. His ISSPF teaching spans leadership and culture, team dynamics and change management, injury prevention and rehabilitation, and long-term athlete development, reflecting a profile that blends people leadership with performance systems.

Across recent elite club roles, Lankheit worked as Director of Human Performance at FC Nordsjælland (June 2024–December 2024), where his remit centred on improving operational efficiency, aligning departments through structured strategy, and embedding data-informed decision-making to support sustainable performance delivery. Prior to that, he held Director of Performance at Bay FC (January 2024–June 2024) and was Head of Performance and Innovation at Philadelphia Union (January 2023–December 2023), where he drove department strategy, built performance measurement and management systems, strengthened interdisciplinary alignment across sport science, medical, nutrition and S&C, and shaped staff development, recruitment, and budgeting within a high-performance programme.

His work in Major League Soccer included a significant period with San Jose Earthquakes (June 2021–January 2023), first as Head of Athletic Performance and then Director of High Performance, leading interdisciplinary delivery across medical, physical, psychological, and nutritional support. This phase was underpinned by a clear cultural and operational focus on player availability and robust performance processes, alongside measurable improvements reported within the department across availability and injury outcomes. Before this, he was Head of Developmental Performance at Seattle Sounders FC (September 2019–June 2021), where he was tasked with building a high-performance department that integrated physical periodisation, sport science protocols, and an individualised development pathway designed to accelerate academy-to-first-team progression while supporting player wellbeing.

Earlier in his career, he worked in baseball as Rehab Coordinator and Assistant MiLB Strength & Conditioning Coordinator at the San Francisco Giants (2019), supporting return-to-performance processes and staff coordination across affiliates. He also spent several years with Mike Boyle Strength & Conditioning as CFSC Headcoach Europe(September 2014–December 2018), combined with roles at 1. FC Nürnberg (Strength & Conditioning Coach / Sport Scientist, July 2017–August 2018) and FC St. Pauli (Strength & Conditioning Coach / Sport Scientist, July 2014–July 2016), building a strong foundation in physical development pathways, load management, and return-to-performance practice. His work also includes time with EXOS (Performance Specialist in Zurich, then Activation Manager at Adidas HQ in Herzogenaurach) and entrepreneurial leadership as Owner / Co-Founder of Fit4TheGame (September 2011–January 2017), where he built and managed a multidisciplinary performance team and delivered S&C programming across youth, elite, and general populations.

Academically, Lankheit has combined high-performance sport with business leadership through an MBA at Warwick Business School (2021–2023), with a dissertation focused on strategy implementation in professional football, alongside a Master of Arts in High Performance Sport at Australian Catholic University (2016–2018). His background supports a profile that is as comfortable designing physical performance systems as it is leading people, managing change, and building sustainable organisational structures in elite football.

Academic Institution: Australian Catholic University; Warwick Business School. Practical Affiliation (current & previous): European Football Clubs; FC Nordsjælland; Bay FC; Philadelphia Union; San Jose Earthquakes; Seattle Sounders FC; San Francisco Giants (MLB); 1. FC Nürnberg; FC St. Pauli; EXOS. Languages Spoken: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French. Content Feature: Leadership and culture in high-performance soccer. Area: Game-related physical training and performance systems in elite soccer.