“This is how it all started”: Dambrauskas’ journey from “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” to the Champions League

INAldas Dambrauskas can ask questions and answers without the slightest pause. Who won the first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1929? It was Emil Jennings, even if someone else might have been tempted to go with Charlie Chaplin. Which country publishes the largest number of daily newspapers? India was the clear winner. Can you name the country that produces the most electricity per capita in the world? His family, watching at home, put their heads in their hands, but he was right: back in 2002, the answer was his native Lithuania.

This was enough to win Dambrauskas about £725 for his performance in Six Zeros a Million, the Lithuanian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? “That was quite a lot of money in those days,” he says. “I could have bought a flat in my home town; it was a very difficult period and they were almost free. But my plan was to go to England and pursue my dream of becoming a coach, and that’s how it all started.”

More than two-and-a-half decades later, the story continues at Old Trafford, where Dambrauskas will manage Azerbaijani champions Sabah in their Champions League debut on Thursday night. The club’s journey is a fairy tale in itself, given that Sabah, which went through a dramatic playoff with Hapoel Be’er Sheva, did not exist until 2017. But the path chosen by their head coach, a 25-year-old office worker with only modest football experience when his general knowledge was demonstrated, is virtually unparalleled in the modern game.

The money they won helped Dambrauskas and his girlfriend, now wife, move to north London and settle in a foreign environment. “I would have done it anyway – the show happened in the middle of our planning,” he says of the move, which became an ambition after a work visit to Norway in 2000.

In Scandinavia he realized the extent of the emerging popularity of the Premier League. “I realized that this is real football. In Lithuania there was no path to a coaching career unless you were a player; it was impossible. But if I could take a course in England, perhaps I would have a chance to climb the career ladder at home.”

Dambrauskas spent eight years in London. “The beginning was very, very difficult. I didn’t speak English well, had no contacts, we didn’t know anyone, lived in different places, did different jobs.” He worked in a Muswell Hill pub, delivered newspapers in the area, worked in a nursery, as a gardener, as a shop assistant and as a self-employed labourer, often at the same time. The hours were merciless, but so was the young man’s concentration.

It was the life of an immigrant couple struggling to make their way. Their first child was born in 2004; by then Dambrauskas, who had studied philosophy and social sciences in Lithuania, had enrolled in a sports science and coaching course at London Metropolitan University. From his 10th-floor classroom, he could see the Emirates Stadium rising during Arsenal’s period of invincibility.

The Access to Sport Project, based in Finsbury Park, is a stone’s throw from Arsenal, but in another sense a galaxy away. It was here that Dambrauskas got his first coaching role, teaching children on Saturday mornings and during school holidays. His next move is all the more remarkable given what has happened since. A series of interviews with Manchester United football schools provided opportunities to work with young people across the country, and sometimes on trips abroad, under the banner of the then serial title winners. Despite the name, it was far from even academic football, but a surge of confidence changed the situation.

“It was John Shiels, the chief executive of the Manchester United Foundation, who gave me the chance. I don’t know what he saw in me – I came in with very broken English and couldn’t express myself as well as I can now – but he really supported me. At the end of the year he wrote me an assessment of what I had done. He said I was good and could do a lot more. That was a huge, huge boost for me.”

Through a friend at university, Dambrauskas became involved with the community sports organization London Tigers. “He told me they always need coaches.” He eventually took charge of their semi-professional team, which played in the South Midlands Spartan League. “That’s where it all started, coaching at some level.” This meant participation in the FA Vase and the early rounds of the FA Cup.

Dambrauskas also worked part-time for Fulham and Brentford before working as a sports activist at the Central YMCA on Tottenham Court Road. He later took on a wider role as sports development manager at London Tigers and gained coaching badges with the London Football Association. “It was a time of no holidays, no days off. I’m a big reader, I read all the time and studied constantly. Sometimes I finished my university work on the bus. I got every education I could and took every course possible at every meeting.

“Over the years I’ve had countless interviews for coaching positions, for jobs at centers of excellence in London and beyond, so many CVs and applications, but I learned early on that it’s very difficult to get up the ranks in England and that coaching at a professional level there is probably impossible. If there’s a story about someone starting out in a public scheme and working their way up to become a head coach, I’ve yet to find it.”

By the end of 2010, he felt ready to achieve his original end goal: a role in Lithuania. He began working with the under-17s and agreed to join Ekranas, the then national champions, as an assistant coach. “I had a job at London Tigers, 15 hours a week at Brentford and a few other things here and there. We had a good life and people thought I was crazy coming home and earning about a fifth of what I was earning in England. But the biggest risk in life is not taking risks.

“I am forever grateful to my wife for supporting me. We always had questions: a guy of twenty or thirty years old is always studying, trying to work in football, spending all his money on books and courses, and not on buying an apartment or something for the family. But I am very happy with the way everything turned out, and now no one questions these decisions.”

Kaleidoscope’s career blossomed. By December 2014, he had become head coach of Zalgiris Vilnius, Lithuania’s biggest club, winning two more league titles and several cups, something that would have seemed unthinkable from his modest upbringing in the tiny northern town of Pakruojis. “My childhood was not a gift. My father died when I was 11, and if he knew that I was working at Zalgiris and that we had won so many trophies, he would have been the happiest man in the world.”

Dambrauskas was not going to stop there. “Basically, you’re a nobody, and suddenly you get this job. Then you have to prove to everyone that you exist, over and over again. So, you’ve reached this rung on the ladder, but what’s next? How do you get to the next level?”

Three years later he joined fast-growing Latvian club RFS, but harbored misgivings about the prospects of breaking out of the small Baltic football bubble. In this case, he has nothing to worry about. Since 2020, he has worked in Croatia with Gorica and Hajduk Split (the latter are “like a tattoo that you can’t remove, it leaves a mark on you”), in Bulgaria with Ludogorets, in Greece with OFI Crete, in Cyprus with Omonia and with Hungarian club Gyosgyor, who he describes as having “one of the biggest hidden football potentials in Europe.”

Such peripatetic career paths, especially in Eastern and Southern Europe, are nothing new. But Sabah courted Dambrauskas for two years before he took over in 2025. As soon as the stars aligned, he performed a miracle. In the 2024/25 season, Sabah trailed Azerbaijan’s biggest club Qarabag by 41 points. Last season, Sabah beat them to the title by nine points, earning them the right to qualify for the Champions League qualifiers. “I’m very grateful to Qarabag. Every game against them is like getting a master’s degree.”

He waxes lyrical about the stability and opportunities available at well-endowed Sabah, who were greeted with the fervor befitting a national team as they overcame an injury-time deficit against Be’er Sheva with trepidation. Their success has come from a diverse team that plays bold football in the style he preaches. “But if you don’t understand the person in front of you, it’s very difficult to communicate your ideas and gain trust,” he says.

“What’s important in East Africa may be completely different from what someone in West Africa or anywhere else in Europe needs. You have to be able to understand different cultures, different traditions, different ways of speaking or behaving. Without that, you can’t do anything, and I think that’s where my strength lies.”

It’s a great example that Dambrauskas and Sabah will be watched from the stands on Thursday by several of his old colleagues from the Manchester United football schools. He beams at the thought; none of this seemed even remotely achievable during their time together on the grass. “But I had this faith. I was confident all the time that I could do it.”

He is also pleased that the draw also led to the January visit to Arsenal that was in his sights during his schooling years at Holloway Road. He is 49 years old and will surely be among Europe’s most sought-after coaching players if he can take Sabah further. “We will respect everyone, but not be afraid of anyone. There is a very good song by the Lithuanian group Colors of Bubbles called Truth or Dare. Very soon we will learn the truth about ourselves and what we are capable of. This will be very useful for us, because I do not want this club to become a one-hit wonder.” Judging by the final responses, this may be the biggest thing for him.