£725 game-show win launched Champions League coach — SkimNews
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- Valdas Dambrauskas won 4,000 litas (~£725) on Lithuania's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2002 — roughly six months' average wages — and used the money to move to London on a student visa at age 25.
- Dambrauskas worked up to four simultaneous jobs (gardener, handyman, newspaper rounds, retail) while volunteering with Access to Sports Project in Finsbury Park and managing London Tigers in non-league football, becoming the first Lithuanian to earn a UEFA coaching licence via the London Football Association.
- Manchester United Soccer Schools hired Dambrauskas in 2004 after multiple interviews; he spent five years coaching on residential courses before short spells at Fulham and Brentford.
- Dambrauskas has since managed 10 clubs across seven countries, winning 13 trophies including league titles with Zalgiris Vilnius, RFS (Latvian Cup), and Ludogorets Razgrad, plus a Croatian Cup with Hajduk Split.
- Sabah FC — founded in 2017, based in Masazir (population 19,000), with a sub-9,000-capacity stadium — won the Azerbaijani league and cup double in Dambrauskas's first season (summer 2025), their first-ever title.
- Sabah are the only club to reach the Champions League proper from the first qualifying round, beating TNS, KuPS, Aarhus, and Hapoel Beer-Sheva, including a stoppage-time equaliser in the final qualifier that forced extra time.
- Sabah's Champions League group includes Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona, Napoli, and Villarreal; home matches will be played at Baku's Olympic Stadium because their own ground doesn't meet UEFA regulations, with away trips to Manchester United and Arsenal.
Why it matters: Sabah's qualification route — four knockout ties from the first qualifying round, capped by a 94th-minute equaliser — is the kind of underdog arc the Champions League rarely produces, and Dambrauskas's path from a £725 game-show windfall to Old Trafford puts a human face on a competition dominated by billion-euro budgets.
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