WROCLAW WELCOME RETURN OF NEW HEAD COACH

American Dave Likins is returning to Wroclaw to take up the Panthers’ vacant head coach position ahead of the 2026 season.

Despite his nationality, Likins is a coach who had made his name in Europe and brings over 45 years of experience back to Poland, including victory in seven EuroBowls and ten German championship titles. He knows the Panthers organisation very well, having served as defensive coordinator in the 2022-23 European League of Football campaigns, and returns after two years with the New Yorker Lions in the GFL as replacement for fellow American, Craig Kuligowski, who stood down at the end of the 2025 season.

“I worked here for two years, and I feel this organisation is one of the best in Europe,” Likins told the Panthers official website. “The final decision comes down to people. Jacek and Dawid Tarczyński and their company provide exceptional support for the entire organisation. Karolina Janas was a huge help to me in 2022–2023, and her expanded role can only make everything run even smoother. The defensive players are some of my favourite athletes I’ve ever coached. The support staff — consisting of professional physiotherapists, team managers, and office personnel — is excellent. No team in Europe has ever treated me better than Panthers Wroclaw did in 2022 and 2023.”

Likins will step up from primarily having been a defensive specialist at his previous stops, including Wroclaw, and feels that he is now ready to take on the responsibility for the entire roster.

“After years of preferring not to be a head coach, now I very clearly want to be one and lead the team in my own style, with my own vision for offense, defense, and special teams,” he explained. “When coaching in Europe, the most important things for me are the development and involvement of local players. They are the foundation. In those [2022-23] seasons, it became clear that Polish players wanted discipline, wanted to work hard, and expected — and deserved — to be treated as adults. I realised that our Polish players were fully capable of making game-winning plays in tough situations. We then want to bring in foreign players who will integrate with the local athletes and be not only great players but also great team-mates. Our plan is to field a well-trained, disciplined and aggressive team of men who play for one another.”

Likins will be surrounding himself with personnel he both knows well and respects to be able to handle their own areas of expertise, with the announcement of his hiring following closely on that of Bryant Foster as defensive backs coach.

“Our offense will be coached by experienced professionals: Troy Tomlin and I have worked together for so many years that we know what the other is thinking,” he revealed. “Both Troy and Jakub Samel have been head coaches and they, along with another coach, will oversee the offense. What we do on offense will be based on the strengths and weaknesses of our players, [but] it will be varied and entertaining.”

While acknowledging the competition in the European professional game has only got closer in his two years away, Likins is not selling his ambitions short heading into the new season.

“I have said before that Panthers are one of the best organisations in Europe — our task is to make Panthers the best organisation in Europe,” he noted. “Once everything settles, the league looks to be very demanding and we cannot expect easy games. We managed to turn a team that hadn’t made the playoffs for four years into a champion in our first season back in Braunschweig and, in Wroclaw in 2023, with a couple more first downs or a couple more stops, we could have beaten Vienna twice and won our division. We plan for success, and we plan to win championships. That’s exactly what we were hired to do.”