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Valdas Dambrauskas used money won on a quiz show to help finance an extraordinary journey into football management.

Manchester United will come up against the youngest side ever to feature in the Champions League this evening.

Michael Carrick’s team face Azerbaijani club Sabah FK at Old Trafford on Thursday in the Red Devils’ first match back in Europe’s elite competition for three years.

The former midfielder steered his old club back into the tournament after a third-place finish in the Premier League, having taken charge from Ruben Amorim in January.

United finished last season so strongly that Carrick, who had originally been appointed only until the end of the campaign, was handed the role on a permanent basis.

He will now take charge of his first Champions League match as a full-time manager.

During his spell as caretaker boss after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was sacked in 2021, Carrick led United to a 2-0 victory at Villarreal, followed by a 1-1 draw with Chelsea and a 3-2 win against Arsenal. He then passed control to Ralf Rangnick, who remained in charge for the rest of the season.

Today, Carrick comes up against a coach whose route to Europe’s biggest club competition has been especially unusual.

Valdas Dambrauskas is the man in charge of the Azerbaijani side, a club formed only nine years ago.

They were crowned national champions last season and negotiated four qualifying rounds to reach the league phase of the Champions League.

Unlike most football managers, who can draw on a previous playing career, Dambrauskas has taken a different path.

Instead, his first appearance in the public eye came in 2002 on the Lithuanian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, while he was studying engineering.

He won 4000 litas, equivalent to £730 at the time, and used that money to move to England and complete his football coaching badges.

He later worked in the youth systems at Fulham and Brentford, as well as at United’s well-known Soccer School, after studying sports science and coaching at London Metropolitan University.

Dambrauskas returned to his native Lithuania in 2010, joining champions FK Ekranas as assistant head coach and reserve team manager before moving to Zalgiris to become a full-time head coach.

Since then, he has managed several highly regarded European clubs, including Ludogorets and Hajduk Split, where he delivered the club’s first major trophy in nine years.

He is now in charge of Sabah, where he has been since June last year.

He won both the league title and the Azerbaijan Cup, then led the club into the Champions League qualifying rounds, where his side progressed past The New Saints, KuPS, AGF Aarhus and Hapoel Be’er Sheva on the way to the league phase.