Exactly 21 years and four days have passed since the cold Podgorica Wednesday when the capital of Montenegro first heard about Gurban Gurbanov, but then remembered him forever...
Many greater masters than the then striker of Azerbaijan played under Gorica, however the shock he caused in February 2003 shook the then national team of Serbia and Montenegro and somehow created a legend about an unknown boy from the Caucasus Mountains.
Led by coach Dejan Savićević, the "blues" met Azerbaijan, then a total football outsider, in one of the rare matches that the former national team played in Podgorica.
SCG was led by goals from Predrag Mijatović and Nikola Lazetić, and then Gurbanov danced in the north of Podgorica and with two goals brought a historic point to his country in the qualifiers for Euro 2004.
After that, his playing career lasted for another three years, before he soon swam into the coaching waters and in 2008 became the head of the Karabagh team, a club that at that time had only one cup of the champion of Azerbaijan in its trophy room.
16 years have passed since then, and Gurbanov is still at the head of the club from the former "ghost city" of Agdam - it is known that Karabagh plays its home matches in Baku due to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Gurbanov is still there, the trophy room is now richer with nine new championship cups, and Karabagh has become a name known to everyone in the football world.
Very quickly, Gurbanov and this club started attacking the group stage of UEFA competitions, and after some painful eliminations in the playoffs, Karabagh finally played in the Europa League in 2014.
That year, thanks to the "refugees from Agdam", among others, the great Inter arrived in Baku, which failed to defeat Karabagh (0:0), and only one point separated Gurbano's team from the knockout stage.
Three years later, Karabagh was added to the stars, the brightest of the Champions League - through Copenhagen, they made it to the group stage of the strongest European competition. It was a moment for history - Azerbaijan had a representative in the Champions League for the first time.
In a very strong group with Chelsea, Roma and Atlético Madrid, Gurbanov and his boys failed to register a historic victory, but with two draws against the giants from Spain, they directly influenced Diego Simeone's "colconeros" to miss the knockout stage of the Champions League.
The European fairy tales of this club continued this season, now with two Montenegrins in black jersey - Marko Janković and his namesake Vešović.
Through a group that included Bayer Leverkusen, Molde and Haeken, the champion of Azerbaijan reached the much-dreamed-of knockout stage, and then last night shocked Europe with an unreal performance in the famous Portuguese "quarry".
Against the team that reached the Europa League after the autumn matches in the Champions League, Karabagh achieved a huge 4:2 before the rematch in Baku. The victory of Gurbano's team could have been more convincing if the experienced and well-known João Moutinho had not scored the final result from the penalty spot in the 92nd.
"This was an important match, but the second one will be even more important - I hope we will manage to save this result in Baku," our Janković, the scorer of the first goal against Braga, told the Azerbaijani CBC Sport briefly.
Karabagh and Gurban Gurbanov are clearly one - "Barcelona from the Caucasus", as they called this club because of the way they played under Gurbanov, continues to write fairy tales.
Bonus video:
