Sergejs Semjonovs (born 15 March 1959) is a

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

manager and a former footballer. He played as a defender.

Playing career

Sergejs Semjonovs was one of the most reliable defenders in

Daugava Rīga FK Daugava Rīga was a Latvian football club, based at the Daugava Stadium in Riga. They played in the Latvian Higher League. The last manager of the team was Armands Zeiberliņš. From the club's foundation in 2003 till 2009 the club was k ...

coached by

Jānis Skredelis Jānis Skredelis (29 December 1939 – 27 June 2019) was a Latvian football coach. Career Skredelis managed Soviet First League side FC Daugava Riga during the 1980s. References External links Interview of Janis Skredelisto Sport Express ''Sp ...

in mid-1980s when the club was one of the strongest sides in the Soviet first league. He played 9 seasons with Daugava, capping 340 appearances and scoring 3 goals. After the collapse of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

Semjonovs played for some time with a club in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, in 1995 he retired from playing and switched to coaching.

Coaching career

In 1995 Semjonovs was appointed the second coach of Amstrig Riga (later – Daugava), after four years he left for

FK Ventspils FK Ventspils is a Latvian football club, based at Ventspils Olimpiskais Stadions in Ventspils city and is one of the most popular football clubs in the country. The club played in the Latvian Virsliga since 1997. It was abolished in 2020, but h ...

where he worked for six seasons as coach of the reserves squad. Before the 2005

Virslīga Latvian Higher League or Virslīga is a professional football league and the top tier of association football in Latvia. Organised by the Latvian Football Federation, the Higher League is contested by 10 clubs. The full name of the league is Op ...

season Semjonovs was appointed head coach of FK Ventspils but in the middle of the season he left the club. He worked with the reserves of

FK Rīga FK Rīga was a Latvian football club based in Riga. They played in the Virslīga, the top division in Latvian football. They played their home games at Latvijas Universitātes Stadions. In 1999, its first year of existence, the club won the ...

until middle of the 2006 season when he was selected head coach. In October 2007 when the results of FK Rīga were getting worse, there were rumours in the Latvian press that Semjonovs would be asked to leave FK Rīga,FK Rīga coach close to losing his job
/ref> however with Semjonovs as head coach

achieved its best placement in

so far by finishing third as the best

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

club in front of

Skonto FC Skonto FC was a Latvian football club, active from 1991 until 2016. The club played at the Skonto Stadium in Riga. Skonto won the Virsliga in the first 14 seasons of the league's resumption (15 in total), and often provided the core of the Latv ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Semjonovs, Sergejs 1959 births Living people Latvian footballers Latvian football managers Daugava Rīga players FK Ventspils managers Latvian expatriate footballers Latvian expatriate sportspeople in Poland Latvian people of Russian descent Association football defenders Expatriate footballers in Poland Soviet footballers