Sabah's Champions League Journey: Missed Chances at Old Trafford
Old Trafford has seen bigger shocks. It has not seen many bigger chances than the one Joy-Lance Mickels headed wide on 39 minutes.
Sabah’s centre-forward drifted to the far post, unmarked, the ball hanging for him after Kaheem Parris had arced a cross over Manchester United’s defence. A simple header, close in, with the away end already rising. Mickels snatched at it. The ball skidded past the upright and with it went Sabah’s best hope of turning a dream into something more than a postcard home.
United were already one up by then, through Matheus Cunha. By full time they were out of sight, 4-0 winners, the scoreline as familiar as the stadium’s red brick. Yet that miss will live with Mickels and with a club still learning what this level really feels like.
A nine-year club on Europe’s biggest stage
For Sabah and their 500 travelling supporters, the night was never only about the result. This was the end point – or perhaps just the latest stop – of an improbable run that started on 7 July, the same day Argentina were knocking Egypt out of the World Cup quarter-finals. Four qualifying rounds, four scalps: The New Saints, Kuopio, Aarhus, Hapoel Be’er Sheva. From Masazir to Manchester.
Masazir is a town of roughly 19,000 people, 25 miles from Baku. Sabah were founded there in September 2017 by real estate developer Yagub Huseynov. Nine years later they arrived at Old Trafford as champions of Azerbaijan, with a league and cup double behind them and a Lithuanian coach whose backstory had already captured imaginations.
Valdas Dambrauskas famously ploughed the £725 he won on Six Zeros – A Million, Lithuania’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, into his coaching education back in 2002. Now, at 49, he was leading the Owls into a Champions League group stage that will also bring Slavia Prague, Borussia Dortmund, Viking, Barcelona, Villarreal, Napoli and Arsenal. Old Trafford was the first test of just how far his methods could stretch.
Carrick goes strong, Sabah stand up
Any illusions about a gentle welcome vanished with Michael Carrick’s teamsheet. Youri Tielemans, Kobbie Mainoo, Cunha, Bruno Fernandes and Bryan Mbeumo all started. Marcus Rashford dropped to the bench so Benjamin Sesko could lead the line in his first start of the season. This was not a night for sentiment from the home dugout.
Sabah, though, refused to be overawed early on. In the pre-match warm-up a few players paused, heads tipped back, taking in the scale of the place. Once the whistle went, they pressed high, ran hard and, for 27 minutes, kept United largely at arm’s length.
Mickels led from the front, the Rwanda international who scored 19 times in last season’s Misli Premyer League snapping into challenges and chasing lost causes. Behind him Ivan Lepinjica glided through midfield as a composed No 6, while Parris on the right offered the burst of pace that worried United’s full-backs. There was threat there. What they lacked was the edge United showed the first time a real opening came.
Patrick Dorgu curled over a cross from the left and Cunha, alive to the space, pounced from close range. One chance, one goal. The kind of ruthlessness that separates Champions League regulars from ambitious newcomers.
The moment that slipped away
Even at 1-0, Sabah stayed in the game. They kept hunting in packs, kept trying to spring forward when United’s passing grew slack. Then came that 39th minute.
Parris, again, found space wide and sent the ball spinning towards the back post. Mickels ghosted in. No marker. No pressure. Just him, the ball and the chance to redraw the night. He met it badly. The ball drifted wide. On the touchline, Dambrauskas turned away. In the stands, the pocket of away fans sagged.
From that point, the contest shifted. The chance had been there. Sabah had not taken it. United, smelling vulnerability, did not offer a second invitation.
Tielemans and Fernandes slice Sabah open
The pressure told before half-time. On 42 minutes, Tielemans and Fernandes combined in a move that exposed Sabah’s lack of experience at this level. A sharp exchange, a clever pass from the Belgian, a clinical finish from the Portuguese past Stas Pokatilov, the Kazakhstani captain in goal. One clean incision, 2-0.
Barely had Sabah reset when they were cut again. Sesko, eager to prove he is more than a late-game weapon, skipped beyond Pokatilov with ease and rolled in the third. From 1-0 and clinging on to 3-0 and done in a blur. The opening Champions League group match, effectively over before the interval.
For Sesko, often cast as the supersub, this mattered. He had scored as a 70th-minute replacement in Sunday’s 2-2 draw at Everton. Now he had backed that up with a goal on his first start of the season. With Manchester City visiting on Sunday for the 199th derby, he has made his case to stay in the XI.
A harsh lesson, a wider journey
The second half no longer carried jeopardy, but it still had pain for Sabah. Lisandro Martínez added the fourth after a calamitous mix-up in the visitors’ box, Pokatilov seemingly losing all sense of where the ball was on his goalline. United did not need the gift. They took it anyway.
For Dambrauskas, the frustration was obvious. His side had pressed bravely early on, had carved out that one huge moment, and yet left with a scoreline that suggested a routine procession.
“We all will all go home thinking that we could’ve done a little bit better – especially the result,” he admitted afterwards. “We didn’t have enough courage maybe, especially from the backline to play out. We were not afraid but maybe we over-evaluated the opponent. Sixteen players went on the pitch and only one of them played at that level before [Veljko Simić, midfielder].”
That is the context. One player with prior experience of this stage. A club barely a decade old. A town of 19,000 sending its champions into a stadium that has swallowed far bigger names.
The scoreline will say 4-0 and history will nod and move on. For Sabah, the night will sit differently. It will be the memory of a missed header, the roar that never came, and the realisation that the margins at this level are as unforgiving as the floodlights above them.
The adventure, though, is only just beginning.
