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<\/p>\nFew managers have greater mental clarity than Maximilian Senft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe result has elements of truth, but only elements \u2014 the result is not the truth. What I have learned in poker is not to let your emotions from a result influence your decisions too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new season is underway for the 35-year-old, who led his SV Ried side to promotion to the Austrian Bundesliga last season \u2014 starting the campaign with a 2-2 draw with juggernauts Red Bull Salzburg last weekend. Senft has earned the right to flex his coaching muscles in his nation\u2019s top division, but his pathway into management is unquestionably unique.<\/p>\n
Senft grew up playing amateur football in the lower leagues of Austria, but the opportunity to play professionally was never truly on the cards. Instead, he earned a degree in economics at Vienna University of Economics and Business before pursuing a passion for poker, travelling the world to compete in tournaments as a full-time professional. His best finish was 11th place among nearly 7,000 contenders in the 2014 World Series of Poker held in Las Vegas, winning approximately $500,000 in prize money.<\/p>\n
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(Franz Kirchmayr\/SEPA.Media\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
It was only in his mid-twenties that Senft saw football coaching as a viable career option, enrolling in coaching courses, earning a Master\u2019s degree in training and sport at the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt, and networking with fellow tactical minds who were contributing to the highly-regarded analysis website Spielverlagerung.<\/p>\n
Double roles as an assistant coach and analyst in the lower leagues of Austrian football led Senft to a position at top-flight club Austria Vienna before becoming assistant coach to Gerhard Struber \u2014 now head coach at Bristol City in the English Championship \u2014 at Wolfsberger AC and Barnsley.<\/p>\n
Barely five years after that stint in England, Senft has returned to the top table of Austrian football as a key man in the dugout, having been promoted to SV Ried\u2019s first-team head coach in March 2023.<\/p>\n
While his focus is now football, the skills he developed from a previous life are just as relevant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say that poker and football are both games of incomplete information,\u201d Senft tells The Athletic.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know what will happen in the next minutes, and you don\u2019t know what kind of cards your opponent holds \u2014 that\u2019s the same in football. It\u2019s so important to be able to adapt to the opponent, and this is the process that never stops over the 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would hope that I\u2019m a bit more cool with my decisions, because I\u2019ve learned to value all the factors that go into a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Senft\u2019s unusual career includes a spell with Barnsley (Ben Roberts Photo\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Senft has developed a clear strategy on how he wants his team to play. Much like adapting to the cards he has been dealt, he and his colleagues have formed a blueprint that can be adjusted depending on the qualities of his squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a concept at the club that gives us a \u2018logic\u2019 about how we speak and think about football,\u201d Senft says. \u201cWithin that, every coach can take their interpretation of that logic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I know my goalkeeper is very good at hitting long balls, how can I integrate his long balls into our idea? If I have a player who can dribble, we need to use this in our game model. Our logic will be interpreted in a way that fits the strengths of the players.\u201d<\/p>\n
Typically setting up in a 3-4-3 or 3-5-2, Senft speaks of different priorities that his team has \u2014 from rhythm to manipulation to overloads, all with a view to playing aggressive, intelligent football.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Set pieces are a key part of that, with Senft\u2019s time in England teaching him the value of training such a crucial phase of the game. SV Ried dedicate one day per week exclusively to set pieces, and the return on investment has been stark. According to Impect\u2019s data, Senft\u2019s side were one of the strongest dead-ball specialists across all European leagues last season, registering an xG difference of 0.39 per game in the set-piece phase. Put simply, they created chances of notably higher quality that they conceded within these situations across the season.<\/p>\n
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(Christian Hofer\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The emotional ebb and flow of modern football will persist, but Senft\u2019s resolve to commit to his tactical decisions is not to be underestimated.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I think my decision is the best, I will go with it \u2014 then sometimes you are the hero and sometimes you are the guy who does not understand football at all and should not be the coach,\u201d Senft says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in the end, judgement from the public or the media should not influence your decision because most of the time (their opinion) will simply depend on the result \u2014 but football is so complex. For example, one substitution cannot be too influential on the result because there are so many other factors at play.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Ian Graham, Liverpool\u2019s former director of research, recently told The Athletic, contrarianism to conventional, risk-averse approaches can itself be a productive approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the same token, sticking to your guns can be a valuable method to cut through the outside noise.<\/p>\n
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