Tass Amiridis honed his craft in the Isuzu UTE A-League; now he’s working in the Premier League. The Australian speaks to aleagues.com.au about his journey to Fulham.
“I still pinch myself,” Tass Amiridis said as he arrived at Fulham’s training base in London.
Amiridis is a first-team physiotherapist and the rehabilitation lead at the Premier League club after taking the plunge five years ago.
The Australian was working with Western United in the Isuzu UTE A-League in the midst of COVID when he and his wife decided to move abroad – with no jobs lined up. He applied for roles at Brighton and Hove Albion, and Tottenham, landing interviews for both.
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Amiridis ended up at Crewe Alexandra in England’s League One and spent over a year at the club before moving to Southampton, where he worked with the club’s B team for almost two years prior to being made redundant upon the team’s relegation from the Premier League.
Now, Amiridis finds himself at Craven Cottage, a place he’s called home since 2023. Working with a Premier League team had always been the goal.
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“My goal was loosely, if I can work in the Premier League in five years time then I’m happy with that,” he told aleagues.com.au as Fulham prepare for the visit of juggernaut Manchester United this weekend. “And if I don’t, I’m not unhappy. It’s just we keep going.
“It came about two years earlier than the five-year mark which is not bad. Happy with that and the irony is that when my role at Southampton was made redundant because we got relegated from the Premier League, I was applying for jobs. I remember sending the Fulham job to my wife on WhatsApp and saying, I’ll apply for this one as well, thinking they’re not even going to consider my application because they’re probably wanting people who already have worked in the program and are ready to go.
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“But it’s totally the opposite there, and it actually turned out to be probably the best environment I’ve ever worked in. I’m not saying it because I’m in that now, but genuinely, hand on heart, it’s allowed me to flourish as a practitioner, and just be the best that I can be. I suppose they’ve seen some things that they like because they’ve given me the head of rehabilitation role there. So, I must be doing something right.
“It just goes to show that if you don’t put your hat in the ring, you never know. Also things aren’t always what they seem. There’s always a silver lining; the redundancy was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, even though at the time, it was hard to swallow.”
He added: “You take stock of it all. You’re looking at the grass, like, wow. This is the Premier League. Even on matchdays, you still think shit, this is the Premier League. This is happening, this is real. You still are grateful for it. You still are appreciative of it and then on top of that, when the environment is great, you’re ultra appreciative of it.”
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It’s an incredible journey for another Australian making their mark abroad, and it ties directly back to the A-Leagues.
The Isuzu UTE A-League is where Amiridis honed his craft at expansion club Western United. The competition also helped him in his quest to crack the Premier League.
His time at the Green and Black – working with the likes of A-Leagues icon Alessandro Diamanti and Greek star Panagiotis Kone during Marko Rudan’s tenure – is not lost on Amiridis.
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“It was really good,” he reflected having previously worked at NPLM VIC outfit Heidelberg United, Green Gully and others. “The biggest things I took away from that was working in a team environment again, because before that I was head of medical at an NPL club, so it was me leading others.
“So I often didn’t have a lot of people to bounce things off if I needed to chat through something. Obviously you have your colleagues that are external, but when you’re in the work environment, you know it’s quite unique.
“The beauty of what I saw was Shane (Carr) gave me such autonomy. Because I’m also a chiro and a physio, and it was my first foray into treating a World Cup Italian superstar in Diamanti and Kone from Greece. These are guys that you see on the world stage, and you think I’m actually rubbing this guy’s calf, or I’m doing spinal manipulation work on this, like these guys are trusting me doing that. It gave you the confidence to go, ‘there’s nothing I can’t do’, because my line manager has given me that autonomy and the confidence to go back.
“Then working with him and Daniel (Hanna) around just putting things together when it came to rehabilitation plans and frameworks and those kind of logistical administration stuff, which is important to do in the world of sport.
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“Again, it just gave you the confidence to go, ‘yeah, this is how a multi-disciplinary team works’. You have your morning meetings with the other staff, and you understand what they’re doing and how every piece of the jigsaw puzzle fits into what the manager wants.
“Ultimately, it’s what the manager wants and we bend to that, and sometimes to our own philosophical detriment. At the end of the day, they’re football players and sometimes you’ve got to always remember that they’re not gym junkies, and they’re not endurance athletes, they’re football players.
“So how do you structure a program that allows them to be the best football player that they can be? Because that’s what the manager wants, as well and as the player.
“So you learn those things working in a professional environment like that, not that you don’t in other environments, but it’s a lot more consistent.”
Now, Amiridis is in Fulham’s inner sanctum. Helping Marco Silva and the Cottagers compete in the biggest league in the world.
Fulham have impressed under the Portuguese, reaching the 2023-24 EFL Cup semi-finals. They have also claimed some big scalps in the Premier League – upstaging eventual champions Liverpool, Chelsea and even Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham en route to an 11th-placed finish last season.
Amiridis has been instrumental along with Fulham’s physios in ensuring players are able to stay out on the pitch for longer, working with stars like Raul Jimenez, Adama Traore, Bernd Leno, Alex Iwobi, Sasa Lukic, Andreas Pereira, Tom Cairney, Harry Wilson and Joachim Andersen on a daily basis.
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“You get to know about their family life. You get to know about their thoughts on things and sometimes it’s not even football talk, it’s just life talk,” he said. “It’s really cool.”
