From game show to Champions League - Sabah coach tells his incredible story
September 7, 2026 08:04
Valdas Dambrauskas will lead Azerbaijani club Sabah out at Old Trafford on Thursday as their manager in the Champions League. The 49-year-old Lithuanian's rise to Europe’s top club competition is being retold in part because footage of his appearance on the Lithuanian edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? resurfaced on social media after Sabah qualified.
Dambrauskas tells BBC Sport the gameshow episode — and the modest prize he won on it — helped him finance a move to London and begin a coaching career that has taken him across Europe and now back to England for a Champions League fixture.
KEY CONTEXT
- Dambrauskas moved to London in August 2002, aged 25, on a student visa with limited English. He had concluded in his teens that he would not become a professional player and chose coaching as his route to remain in the game.
- In 2004 he enrolled on a sports science and coaching course at London Metropolitan University and began coaching in community projects, including the Access to Sports Project in Finsbury Park.
- He worked with London Tigers, progressing from volunteer roles to manage their first team in the Spartan South Midlands League and leading them in national cup competitions such as the FA Cup and FA Vase.
- Through the London Football Association he became the first Lithuanian to obtain a UEFA coaching licence.
WHY IT MATTERS
Dambrauskas’s trajectory — from a small gameshow prize and volunteer coaching roles to managing in the Champions League — highlights a non-linear pathway from grassroots football into elite club competition. His story underscores how formal coaching qualifications, community work and persistence can combine to produce opportunities at the highest level, and it has captured public interest beyond sport through social media attention.
WHAT TO WATCH NEXT
- Confirmed: Dambrauskas will walk out at Old Trafford on Thursday as Sabah manager in the Champions League.
- The source notes he is looking ahead to fixtures involving Manchester United and Arsenal; attention will focus on how Sabah and Dambrauskas perform in those high-profile matches and in the group stage overall.