Football has produced countless remarkable journeys, but few can match that of Valdas Dambrauskas.
As Sabah FK, a small club from Azerbaijan, got its first Champions League group stage fixtures, the head coach Valdas Dambrauskas completed a circle in his career.

Sabah will be taking on some European giants in their first season at the Champions League. They will play Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli and Red Star Belgrade at home, while travelling to Villarreal, Manchester United, Viking FK, and the Arsenal.

That is nothing short of a dream fixture list for any aspiring club, who will turn only 9 on September 8. It’s been a rapid journey to prominence for this Azerbaijan club, and Dambrauskas has been their driving factor to take a seat among the elites.

The 49-year-old Lithuanian coach has gone from being a student who won money on the Lithuanian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to becoming the man who has taken Azerbaijan’s Sabah FK into the UEFA Champions League league phase.

He lost his father at the age of 11 years, and his struggle started then. He started working to provide for his family and did various jobs early on.

Dambrauskas never played elite-level professional football. Instead, he realised at a young age that coaching was the path he wanted to follow. In 2002, as a 25-year-old student, he appeared on Lithuania’s edition of the popular quiz show and won 4,000 Lithuanian litas. Rather than treating the money as a windfall, he used it to change his life.

He travelled to England with his wife, studied Sports Science and Coaching at London Metropolitan University, completed coaching courses and gained experience in the youth systems of clubs including Manchester United, Fulham and Brentford.

During his time in England, his work didn’t stop. Dambrauskas delivered newspapers, worked as an assistant in a shop, also at a kindergarten school to pay his bills.

His first senior coaching experience came in England’s ninth tier with Kingsbury London Tigers. From there, Dambrauskas gradually climbed the football ladder, returning to Lithuania and subsequently managing in several European countries. He collected domestic honours with Žalgiris, Ludogorets and Hajduk Split before taking charge of Sabah.

His Sabah story has now become extraordinary. The Azerbaijani club, founded only in 2017, won its first league title and domestic double under Dambrauskas before embarking on a historic European campaign.

Sabah survived all four qualifying rounds of the Champions League, defeating The New Saints, KuPS and Aarhus before facing Hapoel Be’er Sheva in the play-off. After losing the first leg 2-1, Sabah fell further behind in the return match before producing an astonishing comeback.

They eventually won 5-2 after extra time, completing a 6-4 aggregate victory. Tellur Mutallimov’s late goal forced extra time before Orphe Mbina and Joy-Lance Mickels completed the turnaround. Sabah became the only club among the 28 teams entering in the first qualifying round to survive all four stages.

For Dambrauskas, the achievement represents the culmination of more than two decades of relentless learning.

“I cannot say that this is a benefit. I still believe former players have a better starting position,” he told Flashscore, explaining how non-playing coaches compensate through education and experience.

“My biggest fear is to stop learning and stop developing.” His philosophy is equally bold: “If one word can describe my way, it would be domination.”

Now that philosophy will be tested against Europe’s elite. Dambrauskas has gone from answering questions for money on a television quiz show to coaching in football’s ultimate millionaire competition – the Champions League. It is to see how much Sabah dominate in the UCL, but their dare to dream big has paid off.