Sabah FK coach Valdas Dambrauskas has fond memories of Manchester United and Old Trafford having worked for the club's soccer schools programme 20 years ago.
Valdas Dambrauskas
Valdas Dambrauskas spent five years working for Manchester United Soccer Schools and returns as head coach this week
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Walking out onto the Old Trafford pitch will be a first for the players of Sabah FK tonight, but for head coach Valdas Dambrauskas, it will be a full-circle moment. 22 years ago, he sat in an executive box overlooking the same pitch during an interview for a coaching role at Manchester United Soccer Schools.
Dambrauskas had won 4,000 litas on the Lithuanian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in 2002 and used his winnings, which at the time amounted to around half a year's salary, to fund his dream of becoming a football coach.
Aged 25, he moved to London that summer and coached for community projects, at semi-professional clubs and within professional youth programmes, working for Fulham and Brentford. In 2004, he enrolled on a course in sports science and coaching at London Metropolitan University.
But his big break came with that job at United and he spent five years in the role, coaching international players during residential camps, overseeing player development courses and representing the club's Soccer Schools programme in Switzerland.
"That was the best thing that could happen in my life," Dambrauskas told BBC Sport. I went through three or four interviews. I will be forever grateful to 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."
Shiels retired as chief executive of the Manchester United Foundation this summer and now lives in Dubai. He was the man who gave Dambrauskas a job with the club's soccer schools and he still remembers the Lithuanian and has followed his career closely ever since.
"He's a really nice guy," Shiels told the Manchester Evening News this week. "He was so hungry to learn. He was a great worker, nothing was too much for him and he had a great attitude. My boys, who attended lots of soccer schools, remembered Valdas.
"He fitted right into the culture of the soccer schools where everything was geared around kids having great fun whilst playing the game.
"Since then I have followed him on Facebook and he has worked hard continually to get to his position. It's a real journey for him to return as an opposing coach in the Champions League. I would say it's well deserved."
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Dambrauskas landed his first club coaching role with FK Ekranas in Lithuania in 2014 before moving to FK Zalgiris Vilnius later that year. His nomadic career has since taken him to Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Azerbaijan, winning titles in four different countries.
That includes last year's success in Azerbaijan and the 49-year-old guided Sabah, who were only formed nine years ago, into the league phase of the Champions League. They beat teams from Wales, Denmark and Finland to set up a showdown with Hapoel Be'er Sheva in the final qualifying round.
Sabah were heading out until a 94th-minute goal took the tie to extra time, and they scored twice more to reach this stage before landing a dream trip to Old Trafford to kick off their debut in the competition proper.
"This is beyond my imagination," Dambrauskas said in that BBC Sport interview. "To go through that tunnel onto that pitch.
"I've been many times to Old Trafford with the kids, and now I'm going to come as a coach."