Viking’s two head coaches on Champions League adventure: ‘For us, it’s the best team in the world’

Viking Stavanger’s joint head coaches, Bjarte Lunde Aarsheim and Morten Jensen, have guided the Norwegian champions to an improbable place among Europe’s elite. On Tuesday, the club will host Bayern Munich in its first home Champions League match, a milestone in a journey that began more than a decade ago.

The two coaches, appointed together in November 2020, have transformed Viking from a mid-table side into champions. Their partnership was forged through countless conversations between close friends who first met on the semi-professional scene. Aarsheim recalls a phone call around 2012 or 2013, when both worked day jobs—he in a bank, Jensen in oil and gas—and coached local teams part-time. They told each other: ‘Hey, we should take a team together one day.’

Aarsheim, 51, is a Viking legend, having played nearly 300 games for the club in the 1990s and 2000s as a classy midfielder and captain. Jensen’s playing career at Viking was stalled by injury; he played college soccer in the United States before returning to Norway’s lower divisions and managing tiny Havørn.

Their contrasting personalities complement each other. Jensen describes Aarsheim as calm, collected, and analytical, always seeking solutions and new learning, but capable of exploding when needed. Aarsheim praises Jensen’s big thinking and willingness to voice bold ambitions, from winning the league to the Champions League. ‘He talks about winning the league, the Champions League, everything, while I’m thinking: Let’s just get a good team first,’ Aarsheim says. ‘But it transmits. We put dreams to the players and put that flame inside for them to dream bigger.’

Their paths converged when they became assistants to previous head coach Bjarne Berntsen. When both were due to be interviewed for his replacement, they proposed a joint approach. Jensen remembers asking: ‘What if we just come together? Would you fancy that?’

Viking’s CEO, Eirik Bjørnø, then 29 and newly promoted, recalls the interview. The pair arrived with a 120-page dossier on how their team should play, and at Jensen’s instigation, a special slide. ‘Suddenly there’s this photo of a bunch of sheep,’ Bjørnø says. ‘They had a big spiel about all the sheep, everyone following the main sheep. Then up pop these two wolves on the photo.’ The sheep represented Viking’s competitors, and the message was clear: ‘Are you going to hire these two badass wolves? We’re going to eat up all the sheep.’

Bjørnø and sporting director Erik Nevland, a former Manchester United and Fulham striker, were persuaded. Nevland, who played for Viking across three stints and scored twice in a Uefa Cup win against Chelsea, said: ‘We were at a place in history where we needed to do something different to become better. It was kind of: Let’s go for it. It just made sense. It was a bit of a gamble but we were in a position where we could do that.’

Joint managers are vanishingly rare at the highest level, and Nevland acknowledges the curiosity it generates. ‘When I talk to sporting directors from other countries it’s not Viking any more, it’s: Oh, you’re the club with two head coaches,’ he says. ‘It’s something different but it’s a dynamic thing; it’s not like we will necessarily do it this way whenever they move on. It’s special, but why change something that works?’

Their efforts bore spectacular fruit last year, as Viking beat previously imperious Bodø/Glimt to win the Eliteserien title. Viking had been a dominant force in Norway during the 1970s but had not been champions since 1991, and were even relegated in 2017. Jensen admits the early years were a learning process: ‘In the first two years we learned a lot of things that we’ll never do again.’

Finishing 11th in 2022 brought a keener focus on developing local players—those who, like their managers and the homespun Bjørnø-Nevland double act, understand what it means to represent this mountain-fringed port city in Norway’s south-west. The club’s recruitment pitch is bold, as Jensen explains: ‘We always tell them: If you come to Viking and play for us, we’re going to be the best coaches you ever had.’

Viking’s rise has been built on a shared vision and a willingness to take risks. As they prepare to face Bayern Munich, the two coaches embody a partnership that has defied convention and delivered success beyond expectations. For them, the Champions League represents the ultimate stage, and they approach it with the same audacity that brought them here.