Valdas Dambrauskas’s career comes full circle at Old Trafford

Valdas Dambrauskas will return to Manchester United on Thursday as the manager of Sabah FK, having guided the Azerbaijani club into the league phase of the Champions League for the first time.

The match represents a remarkable return to a club that helped shape his coaching career. Dambrauskas worked at Manchester United Soccer Schools in 2004, following a difficult start in England during which he combined several jobs with university study, football volunteering and raising a family.

A television prize that funded a coaching dream

Before he became a highly decorated coach, Dambrauskas was a 25-year-old contestant on the Lithuanian quiz show Sesi nuliai — milijonas, based on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? He won 4,000 litas, money that funded his move to London and helped pay for coaching courses.

“My dream since childhood had been to become a football coach,” Dambrauskas said. “If you were not a high-profile player, it was almost impossible.”

Life in north London was demanding. He worked as a handyman, in retail, at a nursery school, as a cleaner, newspaper deliverer, childminder and in sports development while studying full time. He eventually earned first-class honours in sports science and coaching at London Metropolitan University.

From semi-professional football to 13 trophies

After his time with Manchester United Soccer Schools, Dambrauskas worked with Fulham and Brentford before taking his first managerial position at Kingsbury London Tigers. The club’s diverse dressing room, which could feature 11 nationalities in one starting lineup, shaped his approach to coaching.

He returned to Lithuania in 2010 and later took charge of Zalgiris, winning eight trophies in three years. By 2026, he had collected 13 trophies across five countries, including league titles in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan and domestic cups in Latvia and Croatia.

Sabah’s historic European run

Dambrauskas accepted Sabah’s offer after maintaining contact with sporting director Ramin Hasanov. The club went on to win its first Azerbaijani league title as part of a domestic double and completed the season unbeaten in 33 matches.

Sabah’s Champions League qualification campaign included victories over TNS, KuPS, Aarhus and Hapoel Beer-Sheva. The decisive tie against Hapoel was rescued when Tellur Mutallimov scored in the fourth minute of stoppage time in the second leg, with Sabah eventually progressing in extra time.

The club, based in Masazir outside Baku, ended the domestic dominance of Qarabag, who had won 11 of the previous 12 Azerbaijani league titles. Sabah’s achievement has now taken Dambrauskas to the competition he had long wanted to reach.

“Coaching in the Champions League for someone coming not from a football background is a massive achievement,” he said. “However, every milestone is very special for me, and each achievement brings a lot of responsibility too.”

The answer he will never forget

Dambrauskas’s old television appearance resurfaced after Sabah’s qualification. He recalls being eliminated by a question about the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1929. The answer was Emil Jannings — a name, he jokes, that is now permanently fixed in his memory.

Against Manchester United, the manager’s journey will be on display in its fullest form: from a quiz-show prize and a series of ordinary jobs in London to the dugout at Old Trafford, leading Sabah into European football’s biggest club competition.