Idman.biz
Valdas Dambrauskas, the 48-year-old head coach of "Sabah," is known in the football world not only for his coaching activities but also for his extraordinary life story.
Idman.Biz reports that he stands out for his special interest in quizzes.
According to reports, he reads 19 books a month in preparation for a quiz. More strikingly, in 2002, at the age of 25, he participated in the local version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in Lithuania.
The quiz was called "Šeši nuliai – milijonas." Dambrauskas won 4,000 Lithuanian litas (approximately 2230 AZN) in the game. He stopped playing after failing to answer which country published the most daily newspapers (correct answer: Japan).
The money he won became a turning point in Dambrauskas's life. With the money, the 25-year-old Dambrauskas traveled to England with his wife and was accepted into London Metropolitan University. He received a higher education in "Sports Science and Coaching" and also gained experience in several youth academies in England. The list includes clubs such as Fulham, Manchester United, and Brentford.
In 2007, Valdas Dambrauskas started working as a manager at Kingsbury London Tigers, a club playing in the ninth tier of English football. He later worked for the Lithuanian U-17 (2009–2010) and U-19 (2011–2012) national teams, as well as the Lithuanian clubs Ekranas (2011–2014) and Žalgiris (2015–2017), the Latvian club Riga (2017–2020), and the Croatian club Gorica (2020–2021). Later, this path led him to "Sabah."
In one of his interviews, Dambrauskas stated that he is used to working under constant high goals:
"I am usually used to seeing my teams in first place or close to it. Any other goal is unacceptable to me. Fighting for high goals under great pressure is a privilege for me. The worst thing is to play for nothing, to stay in the middle of the tournament table. I am not interested in social networks. The only measure of work is the results. The criticism of the fans makes me work harder so that in the end they are proud of their clubs and their achievements."
Thus, this path from the quiz show stage to big football has turned Valdas Dambrauskas into a different and interesting figure in modern football. "Sabah," in turn, expects both results and an ambitious game from him, and that result was evident in yesterday's game.
