From Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to the Champions League: Dambrauskas's remarkable rise

Valdas Dambrauskas will manage in the UEFA Champions League next season after guiding Sabah to a 5-2 extra-time victory over Hapoel Be’er Sheva in Baku on Tuesday, completing four qualifying rounds to reach the 2026/27 league phase — and his path to Europe’s elite competition is unlike almost any other in the game.

Sabah claimed the Azerbaijan Premier League title for the first time in 2025/26, earning their entry into Champions League qualifying. After overcoming The New Saints, KuPS, and AGF in earlier rounds, they needed extra time to eliminate the Israeli champions in the play-off, sealing their place in the competition proper alongside compatriots Qarabag, who reached the knockout round play-offs last season after beating Benfica and drawing with Chelsea.

Dambrauskas, who took charge of Sabah in the summer of 2025, began his coaching journey in circumstances far removed from European football. As a young Lithuanian who had accepted by the age of 12 that he would not make it as a professional player, he set his sights on coaching instead. An appearance on the Lithuanian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire provided the unlikely catalyst — he won the equivalent of a year’s wages and used the money to relocate to England.

“After we’d paid for our flights and accommodation, we had money left for just one month,” Dambrauskas told FourFourTwo in 2022. He arrived speaking limited English and enrolled at London Metropolitan University to study sport science and coaching, eventually earning his first role with London Tigers, a non-league club in west London.

His time in England also included youth coaching stints with Manchester United’s football schools, Fulham, and Brentford. After graduating in 2009, he was appointed head coach of Lithuania’s Under-17 national team in the same year.

Reflecting on the quiz show appearance that set everything in motion, Dambrauskas told FlashScore: “I went to this show to compete and to have a good time. It happened that the possibility to move to England arrived. I went there for a better life, but with a clear idea to try to get on the football coaching ladder. I cannot guess what would have happened without this game, but I believe I would have found a way to achieve my dream.”

From non-league pitches in west London to the Champions League group stage, Dambrauskas’s story stands as one of the more extraordinary managerial journeys the competition has ever produced.