How £725 game-show winnings kick-started Champions League coach's career

On Thursday, Valdas Dambrauskas will walk out at Old Trafford as manager of Sabah in the Champions League. The Lithuanian's career will come full circle, some 20 years since he made his first steps into coaching with Manchester United Soccer Schools. "This is beyond my imagination," Dambrauskas told sources. "To go through that tunnel on to that pitch. "I've been many times to Old Trafford with the kids, and now I'm going to come as a coach." This only scratches the surface of Dambrauskas' remarkable story. It begins with an appearance on the Lithuanian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Dambrauskas using his modest winnings to move to London and forge a career in football. It is a tale of casual jobs, a determination to succeed and a nomadic coaching career across Europe - which now brings the 49-year-old back to England in the Champions League with the Azerbaijani club. How a game show gave Dambrauskas his break As Sabah's players and staff celebrated reaching the Champions League two weeks ago, unbeknownst to Dambrauskas he was becoming a social media star. It all related to that appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2002. Not because he was on the show, but how he spent the money he won. "This is so long ago," said Dambrauskas with a wry smile. "A back-in-the-year story that really was forgotten. "And now suddenly everybody is speaking about this." Dambrauskas walked away with 4,000 litas (about £725). That might not sound like much, but it was six months' wages to the average Lithuanian. For Dambrauskas, the real story should be his career and not a game show. "Everybody now takes only this part, you know, about the money," Dambrauskas said. "But yes, it is a true story. "My idea was somehow I will try to go on these [coaching] courses to gain the coaching badge, maybe go back one day to Lithuania and start to work as a football coach." What began with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? would map out his whole career. 'I was doing two, three, sometimes four jobs' Dambrauskas says he had known since the age of 12 he would not make it as a player, but coaching would keep him close to football. He arrived in London in August 2002 aged 25 on a student visa with limited English. What followed would be eight years of hard work where he would coach for community projects, at a semi-professional club, within professional youth programmes - and hold down multiple jobs while raising two children. In 2004 he enrolled on a course in sports science and coaching at London Metropolitan University, the first real step in his career. Then he started out coaching by volunteering with the Access to Sports Project for deprived children in Finsbury Park. He went on to work with London Tigers, a charitable community organisation which runs teams from junior level right through to semi-professional. Starting out as a volunteer, across five years he progressed to manage the first team in non-league football in the Spartan South Midlands League, FA Cup and FA Vase. Dambrauskas became the first Lithuanian to achieve a Uefa coaching licence through the London Football Association. "I went on every possible course, every possible conference, London Football Coaches Association meetings," Dambrauskas said. "Everywhere I could go just to gain some information, some knowledge, some extra diploma, extra course. "That was very important for me and I took my chances." He got his first break at a professional club when Manchester United Soccer Schools took a chance on him in 2004. Dambrauskas spent five years coaching on residential courses in the UK and in Europe. "That was the best thing that could happen in my life," Dambrauskas said. "I went through three or four interviews. I will be forever grateful to [Foundation chief executive] John Shiels, the way he gave me this chance, because I didn't have experience. "I'd never been in a place with so many great personalities as I got in the Manchester United Soccer Schools." After a short spell with Fulham, Dambrauskas moved to Brentford. He credits academy director Ose Aibangee as one of the biggest influences on his career, pushing his limits. All the while he was juggling home life and working multiple jobs to make ends meet. "I was a gardener, a handyman, doing newspaper rounds at the beginning, also polishing floors in a pub," Dambrauskas said. "So many jobs. Working in retail, and then as a sports development officer, then a sports develop