'We're going to travel almost around the world': Inside Sabah FC's historic Champions League campaign

DUBAI: When Sabah FC secured Champions League qualification for the first time on Aug. 25, the club was not even 9 years old.

Two weeks later, the Azerbaijani champions were walking out at Old Trafford against Manchester United. Now, after an unforgiving introduction to the competition, they are preparing to host Slavia Prague on Oct.

13, with Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli and Arsenal still to come in a debut league-phase campaign that will see them travel around 34,000 km. It is a remarkable new reality for a club founded only in 2017.

Sabah won their first Azerbaijani league title last season, finishing nine points clear of Qarabag, and retained the Azerbaijani Cup to complete a domestic double. They followed that by progressing through four rounds of Champions League qualifying to reach the league phase for the first time.

For Valdas Dambrauskas, getting there had already made the season a success. "Sabah never experienced participation in the Conference League or Europa League, never passed more than two rounds before in European competition, and now we passed all four and qualified for the Champions League," he said.

"Of course, we want to grow the club brand, we want to be known, we want to improve, we want to play good football, we want to get some results, but everything from here is a bonus. Sabah opened away to Manchester United, with Slavia Prague, Borussia Dortmund, Viking, Barcelona, Villarreal, Napoli and Arsenal completing a demanding league-phase schedule.

The draw was not very favorable for us and we got the strongest teams in the world to play against," Dambrauskas said. "We need to take those positives in the best possible way.

Their first lesson came at Old Trafford, where Manchester United handed Sabah a 4-0 defeat. The result was not what we expected, of course, but you can understand where we come from and who we are," Dambrauskas said.

"We're going to play now against the best teams in the world and we cannot think only about the result because it really can be negative sometimes. Even in the local leagues, clubs like Manchester United, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli or Barcelona, they can score four, five, six goals."