Sabah manager Valdas Dambrauskas will complete a remarkable rise from game show contestant to Champions League manager when he makes an emotional return to Old Trafford to face Manchester United on Thursday.
At the same time that Dambrauskas was learning his coaching trade, United’s current manager Michael Carrick was established as a key figure in the Old Trafford club’s midfield, winning the Champions League with Alex Ferguson’s side in 2008. His first managerial position was with amateur team Kingsbury London Tigers before spells as a professional boss in Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Hungary climaxed with his move to Sabah in 2025. Dambrauskas’s Azerbaijani club are making their debut in the league phase of Europe’s elite club competition just nine years after they were founded. We never qualified for the Conference League, we never qualified for the Europa League, we never passed two rounds in a row in previous years and now suddenly we are in the Champions League. “Maybe it was not based at Old Trafford but it’s still the name, the badge, it’s something I’m really proud of and now I come to play as a head coach in the Champions League for a club which is very young. They defeated Hapoel Be’er Sheva in this season’s Champions League play-off round, setting up Dambrauskas’s fairytale evening in Manchester.
Sabah are the youngest club to ever reach the Champions League and Dambrauskas said: “We are only nine years old. “And for the club and myself making the debut in the Champions League main phase is really amazing and to play Manchester United gives it even more symbolism.”
