Valdis Dambrausks Photo: Split “Hajduk”
Valdis Dambrausks from Lithuania, the former head coach of the Latvian Football Super League club RFS, will continue to lead the Croatian club Hajduk in Split, the club announced on Tuesday. Dambrausks agreed with the club on cooperation on Tuesday, signing the agreement by summer 2024.
The Lithuanian specialist in Latvia is better known as the RFS head coach, who took over the team before the 2018 season, leading it until February 2020. In his first year at the club Dambrausks, he helped RFS win bronze, but in the second year, the capital’s team took a step forward, triumphing in the Latvian Cup.
The 44-year-old Dambrausks studied at the football academies in England, but started a full-fledged career in his homeland as an assistant to Valdis Urbons in the Panevėžys “Ekranas” team, twice becoming the national champion. In 2014, Dambrausks was already the head coach, but after that season, the Panevėžys unit went bankrupt.
Valdas Dambrauskas is the new coach of Hajduk! • https://t.co/wxmyWoEceI #Hajduk pic.twitter.com/Vpi29P78qe
– HNK Hajduk Split (@hajduk) November 2, 2021
After working in the Panevėžys “Ekranas” team, at the end of 2014, Dambrausks became the head coach of the Vilnius “Žalgiris” team, winning all possible titles in Lithuania in the next two seasons and at the beginning of 2017 also meeting the Lithuanian Super Cup.
Dambrausks was also recognized as the Lithuanian coach of the year in 2016, however, the end of the 2017 season “Žalgiris” was unsuccessful, which forced the specialist to resign at the end of October. Dambrausks has also previously trained the Lithuanian U-19 national team, and in 2019 he was also mentioned as one of the candidates for the position of the head coach of the Lithuanian national team.
After RFS, the Lithuanian specialist worked in another Croatian club “Gorica”, with which he won the sixth place in the Croatian championship. The Gorica unit announced that the contract with Dambrauska was concluded until June 2021, but, being in the third place in the Croatian championship, Dambrausks transferred to the Bulgarian club “Ludogorets” in Razgrad earlier this year. At that time, “Gorica” was also left by the fellow sports director Mindaugas Nikoličs, who invited him there, who moved to “Hajduk”. Now the two have met again at the Split Club.
It is reported that two of his assistants are coming to the Dambrauskas club together – 47-year-old Marjus Skinderis, who also worked with Dambrauskas in Riga, and 36-year-old Justins Gasjuns.
