From "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" to Champions League football, Valdas Dambrauskas has arrived

Lithuanian football coach Valdas Dambrauskas is going to lead Azerbaijani side Sabah in Europe’s elite competition, the UEFA Champions League, during the 2026/27 season.

This season will mark Sabah’s debut campaign in the Champions League, with the Bayquslar having come through the qualification play-offs, beating Israeli side Hapoel Be’er Sheva in extra time. Before that, they pipped 12-time champions Qarabag to the league title.

For a club that was founded only nine years ago, this sounds crazy, no?

And we’re not done yet. When it comes to crazy, their head coach’s life story cannot be topped. 

Valdas Dambrauskas loved football since childhood. While he could only play as high as the third tier of Lithuanian football, his connection with the sport remained strong and the dream never faded.

In 2002, as a young engineering student, Dambrauskas appeared in the Lithuanian version of the popular game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”. Although he didn’t win the one-million jackpot, he earned 4,000 Lithuanian litai (around £1,000) and spent every single dime on enrolling at London Metropolitan University, studying Sports Science and coaching there. From thereon began his 25-year fairy tale journey that has now brought him to the UEFA Champions League. 

Along with his studies, in 2005 Dambrauskas started working with the youth academy at Manchester United. He also pursued a Masters degree at the Lithuanian Sports University before returning to England to start his coaching career.

He earned his first senior coaching position in 2007/08 with ninth-tier club Kingsbury London Tigers in the Spartan South Midlands Football League. He led them to their highest points finish that season. Between 2009 and 2010, Dambrauskas also coached the Lithuanian U17 and U18 national teams. He was also a youth coach for Brentford for a year until 2010, after which he went back to Lithuania to coach the U19 national team for a year. 

While coaching the Lithuanian U19 national team, Dambrauskas became an assistant coach for Lithuanian champions Ekranas, where success came in the form of a domestic double in 2011. He became their head coach in February 2013 but couldn’t continue when the club declared bankruptcy at the end of the 2013/14 season.

Dambrauskas then moved to another heavyweight Lithuanian side, Žalgiris, in December 2014. He had a particularly successful stint there, as they won consecutive league titles until 2017, including a domestic quadruple in 2016. Following poor performances after the 2016/17 season, however, Dambrauskas resigned from his position in October 2017.

He then moved through several clubs in lower European leagues. He coached Latvian side RFS (2017–20), Croatian team HNK Gorica (2020–21), Bulgarian champions Ludogorets Razgrad (2021), Croatian giants Hajduk Split (2021–22), Greek Super League club OFI Crete (2022–23), Cypriot First Division club Omonia Nicosia (2024), and Hungarian outfit Diósgyori (2025) before arriving at Sabah in July last year on a three-year contract. (Source: Transfermarkt)

In his first season itself, Dambrauskas led Sabah to their first Azerbaijani Premier League title as well as the Azerbaijani Cup, completing a domestic double. They topped the league table with 78 points in 33 league games with 24 wins, six draws, and only three defeats the entire season. This enabled them to reach the Champions League qualifiers, where they defeated Hapoel Be’er Sheva to reach the main draw.

While the team deserve a lot of credit for performing on the pitch, the contributions of the coaching staff can never be undermined. They are the ones that work hard behind the scenes continuously to help with the tactics and making tweaks when plan A doesn’t work.

It has been a long journey for the 49-year-old to reach Europe’s elite stage, but Dambrauskas has surely arrived. Sabah will be playing at iconic footballing venues in the league phase, pitting their wits against the best players and teams in the world, which will make for an experience for the ages and will only help their development. 

Securing a domestic double and becoming only the second club from Azerbaijan to qualify for the Champions League main draw is already a massive achievement. To reach such heights at such a young club is the stuff of dreams for any football coach. 

Dambrauskas’ incredible backstory is proof that, if we have a dream and persevere, the universe has its own strange and mysterious ways to make that dream a reality. His journey to football coaching might not have been straightforward and had many obstacles, but Dambrauskas has definitely reached where he always wanted to be. 

Along with his abilities as a top football coach, Dambrauskas is also known to be an avid chess player and has also participated in the Lithuanian rapid chess championship. Playing “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” alone can change lives, but for him it just kick-started a fairy tale, and it will be interesting to see how he manages in the Champions League hot seat with his critical thinking and decision-making against Europe’s very best.