Everyone is talking about Como.

The lake, the elegant shirts, Cesc Fàbregas, the new ownership, the sudden transformation of a small Italian club into one of the most fascinating projects in European football. Their 4–1 victory over RB Leipzig felt like the perfect modern football story: ambition, investment, aesthetics, and a team announcing itself to the world with confidence.

But on the same Champions League matchday, another club walked into a much older theatre and carried a very different kind of story with them.

Sabah FK lost 0–4 to Manchester United at Old Trafford. Matheus Cunha, Bruno Fernandes, Benjamin Šeško, and Lisandro Martínez made sure the final score looked comfortable. For many people, the name Sabah may have sounded unfamiliar before kick-off. That is understandable. Sabah were founded only on 8 September 2017, in Masazir, a town just outside Baku, Azerbaijan.

They are not a club built on a century of history. They do not have a long list of European nights, famous former players, or generations of supporters who grew up believing that Champions League football was part of their natural inheritance.

Sabah were created in a country where Qarabağ had dominated Azerbaijani football for years. Their home, Bank Respublika Arena, holds fewer than 9,000 people. Their club colours are black and pink. Their nickname is The Owls. Until very recently, they were simply one of the ambitious clubs trying to make their way through the domestic football system.

"Then everything changed."

Sabah began in the Azerbaijan First Division during the 2017–18 season. They finished fifth, but when the clubs above them failed or declined promotion, Sabah were given a licence to play in the Premier League. Their first season in the top flight ended with a seventh-place finish. There was no immediate miracle, no overnight transformation, no guarantee that the club would become anything more than a respectable participant.

They had to build slowly.

There were seasons of fifth-place finishes, difficult cup campaigns, managerial changes, and the normal uncertainty that follows a young club. In 2022–23, Sabah finished runners-up, a sign that they were becoming more than an outsider. They had started to challenge the established order, but Qarabağ still stood above everyone else. The gap was enormous.

In the 2024–25 season, Sabah finished 41 points behind Qarabağ. That is not a small difference. It is the kind of gap that tells you the hierarchy is not merely competitive, but deeply entrenched.

Then came Valdas Dambrauskas.

The Lithuanian coach arrived at Sabah in July 2025. In his first season, he led the club to its first Azerbaijani Premier League title and helped complete a domestic double with the Azerbaijan Cup. Sabah did not simply win the league. They finished nine points ahead of Qarabağ, ending a period of dominance that had seemed almost permanent. [1]

A club that had not existed a decade earlier was suddenly the champion of Azerbaijan.

But winning the title was only the beginning. Because Azerbaijan does not offer a direct route into the Champions League league phase, Sabah had to take the long road. They began in the first qualifying round and defeated The New Saints of Wales, KuPS of Finland, and Aarhus of Denmark.

Then came Hapoel Be’er Sheva. Sabah lost the first leg in Israel 2–1. In the return match at home, they were still being eliminated when the game entered stoppage time. At 90+9, defender Tellur Mutallimov scored to make it 3–3 on aggregate and force extra time. Sabah then scored twice more, winning 5–2 on the night and completing one of the most dramatic qualification stories of the season. [2]

That is how they reached Old Trafford. Not through a lucky invitation. Not because the competition needed a colourful newcomer. They earned the right through a league title, four qualifying rounds, and a comeback that refused to die even after the match had already passed its normal ending.

There is something deeply romantic about that journey.

Football is usually told through the stories of clubs that have always belonged in the room. Real Madrid, Milan, Liverpool, Bayern, Manchester United. Their histories are made of trophies, iconic players, European nights, and generations of supporters who already know what the stage looks like.

Sabah arrived as strangers. They entered a stadium that had carried the memories of George Best, Bobby Charlton, Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo, and countless other football legends. They heard the noise, saw the lights, and stood across from a club whose name has been familiar to the world for more than a century.

For a while, Sabah did not look completely overwhelmed. They pressed, tried to stay brave, and searched for the moment that might change the entire evening. In the 39th minute, Joy-Lance Mickels came close to equalising. Had that chance gone in, perhaps Old Trafford would have become nervous. Perhaps Sabah would have believed that the impossible was not entirely impossible.

It did not happen. Manchester United took control. The quality gap became clearer. The score eventually reached 4–0, and the night became a comfortable victory for the home side.

But the final score only tells us what happened during 90 minutes. It does not tell us how long Sabah had been travelling to reach that pitch. The most beautiful part of their story may be found on the touchline, in the figure of Valdas Dambrauskas. His journey to the Champions League is almost too strange to be written as fiction.

In 2002, Dambrauskas was a 25-year-old office worker and engineering student in Lithuania. He had never played professional football and had no obvious pathway into elite coaching. In Lithuania at the time, becoming a professional manager without a background as a professional player was considered almost impossible.

Then he appeared on Six Zeros – A Million, the Lithuanian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

He won around £725. It was not a fortune, but it was enough to change the direction of his life. He used the money to move to England with his girlfriend and invest in coaching courses. [3]

The beginning was not glamorous. He arrived in London with weak English and no football contacts. He worked in a pub, delivered newspapers, worked in a nursery school, became a gardener, took sales jobs, and worked as a handyman. At the same time, he studied sports science and coaching at London Metropolitan University.

He was not living the life of a future Champions League manager. He was simply trying to remain close enough to football for an opportunity to eventually find him. That opportunity came through Manchester United Soccer Schools. In 2004, after several interviews, Dambrauskas was offered the chance to work with young players under the Manchester United banner. It was not a role in the first team or the academy. But it gave him confidence, experience, and proof that he could belong in football.

He later worked with Fulham and Brentford, coached the semi-professional London Tigers, studied constantly, and collected every qualification he could. He has described that period as a life with no holidays and no days off. He would finish university work on buses and spend his money on books and courses instead of buying an apartment.

Eventually, he made the difficult decision to return to Lithuania. Many people thought he was crazy. He had a better life in England and was earning more money, but he believed the only way to fulfil his dream was to take the risk. He joined Ekranas as an assistant in 2010 and began the long climb into professional management.

At Žalgiris Vilnius, he won two Lithuanian league titles, three Lithuanian Cups, and two Super Cups. At Latvia’s RFS, he won the club’s first major national trophy. At Ludogorets, he became a Bulgarian champion. At Hajduk Split, he won the Croatian Cup and ended the club’s ten-year wait for a trophy. He later managed OFI Crete, Omonia, and Diósgyőr before arriving in Azerbaijan. [4]

It was a career built without the shortcuts usually associated with elite football. No famous playing career. No powerful family connection. No linear path through the biggest clubs. Just education, movement, rejection, risk, and an almost stubborn belief that the next step was always possible.

That is why his return to Old Trafford mattered. The stadium was the same place where he once worked with children and tried to establish himself in football. This time, he walked into it as a Champions League manager, leading the champions of Azerbaijan against Manchester United.

Somewhere in the stands were people who had known him before this story became impressive. Former colleagues from Manchester United Soccer Schools watched him return to the place where his football life had first opened.

There is a particular beauty in that circle closing. The man who once used a television quiz prize to buy himself a chance in England was now standing on the Old Trafford touchline, managing a club that had not even existed when he began his journey. That is more than a football story. It is a story about time, patience, and the strange ways in which a life can eventually make sense.

Dambrauskas has said that he does not want Sabah to become a one-day wonder. That is important. The Champions League should not be treated as the conclusion of their story, but as a test of whether the club can turn one extraordinary season into a sustainable future.

They will face Barcelona, Napoli, Arsenal, Borussia Dortmund, and other European opponents. Some nights will be painful. The financial and historical differences will sometimes become impossible to hide.

But young players in Azerbaijan will remember that Sabah once played at Old Trafford. Supporters will keep photographs from the trip. Families will tell their children about the night their club stood among Europe’s giants.

The 0–4 defeat may eventually become a statistic.

The memory will not. Como may have produced the more glamorous story this week. They looked like a club designed for the modern football age, polished and confident, ready to turn ambition into spectacle. Sabah offered something quieter. They offered the romance of a club that had not yet learned to believe it belonged, but walked onto the biggest stage anyway.

They offered the image of a manager returning to the place where his dream had started, carrying with him a club that had only just begun to dream at all.

They lost 0–4.

But for one night, Sabah FK was no longer an unknown name from Azerbaijan. It was a club with a history, a champion with a future, and a manager whose life had travelled an impossible distance to reach that pitch.

Sometimes the smallest club carries the biggest dream.

And sometimes, even in defeat, that is enough.

/References

[1] The Guardian. (2026, September 10). “That’s how it started”: Dambrauskas’ journey from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to Champions League.

[2] UOL. (2026, September 10). Lituano virou técnico da Champions com prêmio do “Quem quer ser milionário”.

[3] ESPN. (2026, September 10). Who are Sabah FK, Champions League debutants?.

[4] UEFA. (2026, September 10). Champions League matchday 1 Thursday highlights and round-up.