Patience is the mother of virtues. Not for Sabah FC, which will discover the Champions League only nine years after its creation, but for its Lithuanian coach, Valdas Dambrauskas, 49 years old. “It’s beyond my imagination. I remembered coming to Old Trafford with the children, and now I am going to return there as a coach,” he marveled a few days before facing Manchester United on Thursday (9 p.m.) to launch an unprecedented Champions League campaign.
Not only will Sabah FC discover the queen of competitions, but it will even discover the European Cup itself. For three years, this small club from Azerbaijan, founded in 2017 and champion for the first time in 2026, has always failed in the preliminary rounds. Last year, Levski Sofia (Bulgaria) deprived him of the Conference League. The year before, it was the Irish from St Patrick’s Athletic. Unusual.
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8 preliminary round matches to get there
This time, Sabah has completed a journey that began on July 7. As the round of 16 of the World Cup came to an end, Dambrauskas' players beat the Welsh New Saints FC in the first leg of the first preliminary round (2-0). They have thus, technically, already played 8 European matches this season, the last two eliminating Hapoel Beer-Shava (Israel). That’s also what the Champions League is.
The great Manchester United will therefore see the first team in the history of the C1 to have pink among its dominant colors arrive on its lawn, as very seriously noted by ESPN. This color is that of Lake Masazir, located in the eponymous locality on the edge of Baku, where Sabah FC plays. Its logo features an owl, which has become the symbol of the club for its intelligence and wisdom, values towards which the “Rose et Noir” want to strive, like their coach.
Dambrauskas “established a winning mentality,” praised President Magsud Adigozalov. Above all, he started from nothing to get there. It all started with a game show in his country. In 2002, he participated in the Lithuanian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” and wins 4,000 litas, or a little more than 1,000 euros. He uses it to go to England to study.
Dambrauskas, from newspaper deliveryman to Champions League coach
“The game had a very low impact. Even without that, I think I would still have found a way to go to England,” declared the man who worked with the training centers of Fulham, Brentford and… Manchester United. In addition to a degree in sports science, obtained in 2009 at London Metropolitan University, this man from the working class of the former Soviet Union, a great chess enthusiast, found work delivering newspapers or looking after children. And launched his coaching career in the 9th English division.
For almost 20 years now, Dambrauskas has been playing second-rate clubs in obscure championships (Hungary, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, etc.). Until settling down in Azerbaijan a year and three months ago. There he discovered a team whose success was built on the “Moneyball” strategy, an approach based on increased use of advanced statistics (data), born in the world of baseball in the United States and made famous by a film released in 2011, with Brad Pitt starring.
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This way of doing things is common among low-budget clubs. This is the case of Sabah, founded by Yagub Huseynov, boss of the Bridge Group business conglomerate, specializing in real estate. Not a billionaire, nor a state, just a man happy to have seen his team finish 5th in the Azerbaijani second division for its debut, and to be promoted thanks to a combination of circumstances: the first four clubs did not have the necessary structure to progress to the next level.
Playing against such clubs gives me a greater sense of responsibility and extra motivation rather than excitement.
Tellur Mutallimov, Azerbaijani right back of Sabah FC
Only real football fans will recognize certain names in the squad on Thursday, like the former Lille right-back Akim Zedadka or the former Angevin midfielder Zinédine Ould Khaled. If there was a star, it would be Joy-Lance Mickels, Rwandan striker and top scorer in the club's history (77 goals in 149 matches). There is, in theory, not much to dream about at the Bank Respublika Arena, a stadium which can accommodate up to 13,000 people, as many as the Licorne stadium in Angers or Jean-Dauger in Bayonne.
This will surely be strange for Borussia Dortmund, Naples or FC Barcelona, who will travel to Azerbaijan this season. It will be especially special for the Masazirites, but there is no question of arriving as tourists. “Playing against such clubs gives me a greater sense of responsibility and additional motivation rather than excitement,” right-back Tellur Mutallimov swore at Euronews.
The stakes go beyond him, as President Magsud Adigozalov pointed out: “If our participation attracts more children to football, more families to the stadium and builds confidence in Azerbaijani football, then the impact will go far beyond Sabah.” The first page of the book is still blank. Like a sign of destiny, it will be written in a stadium nicknamed “the theater of dreams”.
