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.<\/p>\n
He arrived in London in August 2002 aged 25 on a student visa with limited English.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
In 2004 he enrolled on a course in sports science and coaching at London Metropolitan University, the first real step in his career.<\/p>\n
Then he started out coaching by volunteering with the Access to Sports Project for deprived children in Finsbury Park.<\/p>\n
He went on to work with London Tigers, a charitable community organisation which runs teams from junior level right through to semi-professional.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Dambrauskas became the first Lithuanian to achieve a Uefa coaching licence through the London Football Association.<\/p>\n
“I went on every possible course, every possible conference, London Football Coaches Association meetings,” Dambrauskas said. <\/p>\n
“Everywhere I could go just to gain some information, some knowledge, some extra diploma, extra course. <\/p>\n
“That was very important for me and I took my chances.”<\/p>\n
He got his first break at a professional club when Manchester United Soccer Schools took a chance on him in 2004.<\/p>\n
Dambrauskas spent five years coaching on residential courses in the UK and in Europe.<\/p>\n
“That was the best thing that could happen in my life,” Dambrauskas said.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“I’d never been in a place with so many great personalities as I got in the Manchester United Soccer Schools.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
All the while he was juggling home life and working multiple jobs to make ends meet. <\/p>\n
“I was a gardener, a handyman, doing newspaper rounds at the beginning, also polishing floors in a pub,” Dambrauskas said.<\/p>\n
“So many jobs. Working in retail, and then as a sports development officer, then a sports development manager, and the central YMCA.<\/p>\n
“I was doing two, three, sometimes four jobs.”<\/p>\n
As well as the trip to Manchester United this week, Sabah will complete their Champions League group games at Arsenal in January. <\/p>\n
This also feels like fate for Dambrauskas – one of the buildings at London Metropolitan University on Holloway Road overlooked Emirates Stadium. <\/p>\n
When asked about his time in England, Dambrauskas’ face lights up. <\/p>\n
“When I hear this word ‘England’, it for me sounds like opportunities,” Dambrauskas said.<\/p>\n
“It was really amazing. England gave me all this and I’ll forever be grateful.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dambrauskas says he had known since the age of 12 he would not make it as a player,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-762780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}