“I worked at a bank, he was in the oil and gas industry”: Bayern Munich’s Champions League opponents Viking Stavanger and their remarkable coaching set-up
Viking Stavanger, Bayern Munich’s Champions League opponents today, have not one but two head coaches. The story of their appointment at the Norwegian champions is remarkable.
It must have been 2012 or 2013. Bjarte Lund Aarsheim can't remember exactly, hardly surprising given how often he spoke on the phone with his good friend Morten Jensen. Both dreamed of becoming professional coaches, but when they made the call Aarsheim still remembers so vividly, they were some way from getting there.
"I worked at a bank, he worked in the oil and gas industry, and we both coached a local team on the side," Aarsheim tells the Guardian. One exchange still makes him smile: "I remember us saying: 'Hey, one day we should coach a team together.'"
That dream came true. Now Aarsheim and Jensen are on the touchline in the Champions League. The joint head coaches have led Viking Stavanger into the competition, where they face Bayern Munich in their first home match on Tuesday (9pm). Harry Kane and Michael Olise are among the players waiting for them.
Who are the two coaches of Bayern Munich's opponents Viking Stavanger?
"I think tomorrow's match will be the biggest in our history," Aarsheim said at Monday's press conference. The 51-year-old spent 12 years playing for Viking (1993 to 2005). He also witnessed what was perhaps the club's greatest night on the international stage, though not from the pitch. In early October 2002, the Scandinavians beat Chelsea 4-2 in the second leg of the UEFA Cup first round, knocking out a side featuring John Terry, Frank Lampard and Gianfranco Zola.
Erik Nevland can tell that story from the pitch: he scored twice and supplied an assist. Just over 18 years later, in November 2020, Nevland, now Viking's sporting director, helped make the remarkable decision to appoint two head coaches. "We had reached a point in our history where we had to do something fundamentally different to get better," he recalls in the Guardian of Aarsheim and Jensen's appointment.
Aarsheim had returned to Viking as a youth coach in 2016. Jensen, who never became a professional player, coached Norwegian third-tier side FK Vidar in 2017, earning an assistant coach's role at Viking. His friend Aarsheim had also been an assistant there since the start of 2017.
At the end of 2020, the pair succeeded their previous boss, Bjarne Berntsen. "We thought: 'Let's just give it a try.' It somehow made sense. Of course it was a risk, but we were in a position where we could take it," sporting director Nevland says of Viking's decision at the time.
Viking Stavanger follow a similar formula for success to Bodö/Glimt
Viking come from a city of 150,000 people in southern Norway and play their home matches on artificial turf. Their history is rich: they won four successive league titles in the 1970s and remained a top team for years. But their 1991 triumph was their last league title for a long time. They briefly dropped into the second division in 2017, then regrouped after winning promotion straight back. Results did not immediately click under Aarsheim and Jensen either. Viking finished 11th in Norway's Eliteserien in 2022.
"In the first two years, we learned a great many things that we will never do that way again," Jensen explains. One lesson was to focus even more on developing players from the region, young men who, like Aarsheim, Jensen and sporting director Nevland, know what playing for Stavanger means. League rivals Bodö/Glimt have followed a similar approach with great success.
"That is perhaps the best thing," Jensen says enthusiastically of Viking's renewed importance in the region. "It is not the Champions League or the league title, but seeing how many children walk around the city or school in Viking shirts. Ten years ago, you only saw Manchester United or Liverpool shirts. That makes me particularly proud."
Viking Stavanger won the Norwegian league title in 2025 for the first time in 34 years
Since 2023, Aarsheim and Jensen's unusual arrangement has taken Viking forward. They finished fourth, then third, before winning their first league title in 34 years in 2025. A victory over Dinamo Zagreb in Champions League qualifying at the end of August put Viking among the biggest clubs, with their coaching setup setting them apart.
"When I talk to sporting directors from other countries, they no longer talk about Viking; they always just say: 'Oh, you're the club with two coaches,'" Nevland reports. Both coaches have contracts until the end of 2029, but Viking will not necessarily appoint another duo if they leave, the sporting director says. For now, he accepts that Viking's solution may be "special". "But why change something that works?"
