How Norwegian club Viking became the talk of Europe

• Champions League draw with Bayern Munich
• Why the club means everything to Nevland
• The low point of losing 5-0 in the second tier
• Winning the title again after a 34-year wait
• Why they do it differently with joint-coaches
• Building something sustainable for the future

For Eirik Bjorno, Viking's chief executive, it was the first goal against Bayern Munich. "That was the moment," he tells Sky Sports. "You are preparing for wave after wave, maybe having a counter-attack or two, and then you score from the first corner."

Erik Nevland, the Norwegian club's sporting director, preferred the second. "You can always score early," he explains. "But that was something that we had never dreamed of. It was crazy. More than we could expect. It was just a night for the history books."

The third goal guaranteed that. Bayern had turned the game around with three goals of their own but Michael Olise was sent off and Viking seized the moment - their moment - to claim a draw on the night that Champions League football came to Stavanger.

"It was the biggest game in our club's history," says Bjorno. "The most important learning is that we can actually compete. We can actually cope with the tempo." Viking certainly did that, managing to upset the Bundesliga champions in more ways than one.

Max Eberl of the Bayern board was so ruffled by Zlatko Tripic's part in Michael Olise's red card that the executive made headlines by describing the Viking captain as a "scumbag" afterwards. "But he is our scumbag," says Nevland, laughing. "We love him."

To understand just why the 48-year-old Nevland is enjoying this moment so much, some context is needed. The former Norway international left Viking to join Manchester United as a teenager and played for the club in the Premier League, later featuring for Fulham.

But this is his club. There were four stints with Viking as a player but the love affair began much earlier. His mother even worked for the club. He has never known anything quite like this. "I have dreamed about this since I was five years old," Nevland explains.

"I played for the club from the age of seven and I never experienced this as a player. It is kind of a dream to win the league and to now represent Viking in the Champions League. This is my hometown club and it means everything. It is the proudest time of my life."

That pride also stems, in part, from the journey that this club has been on. Bjorno, like Nevland, remembers just how far Viking fell. Rock bottom arrived eight years ago in the second tier. "The low point was losing 5-0 against a team called Nest-Sotra," he recalls.

Bjorno seems to pause for comic effect. "That club does not exist anymore." It serves to underline the absurdity of it. This was June of 2018 and there were only 274 spectators there to see Viking go four behind before the end of the first half. This was their nadir.

"That was the absolute low point," confirms Bjorno. "It looked like we would not go up but we turned it around and got promoted by a point." Progress was steady thereafter, albeit with a wobble in 2022, before clinching the title for the first time in 34 years in 2025.

How? That is the obvious question. They say that acceptance is the first step on the road to recovery and Nevland's blunt assessment of that version of Viking would appear to attest to that theory. "We realised that we were bad. Something needed to change."

Bjorno, rather magnanimously, points to external factors. Norwegian football in general is enjoying an upturn in performance levels. "The federation started to make sure we were developing players." But that does not explain why it is Viking who have capitalised.

Nevland offers a hyper-local explanation. "We use our academy and have homegrown players. We also have people in leadership roles who love the club and want to do well, people who have a passion for the town and have been around the club for a long time."

Having people in key positions who really want to be at Viking is key, he believes. "This is the biggest job that they have had," Nevland explains. And that presence provides real continuity. "Players can come and go. But the culture that we have created is massive."

Viking's joint-coaches are an example not just of that continuity culture but also the club's willingness to do things differently. Bjarte Lunde Aarsheim played for the club for years, while fellow head coach Morten Jensen was also on the books as a teenager.

It is an unusual job-sharing arrangement but it works for Viking. "Regardless of what people think or what the natural thing to do is," says Bjorno, "we need to ask ourselves what the best decision is for Viking. We genuinely thought it would make us better."

Nevland actually sees it as a bonus that others are not taking this approach. "It was bold to do it that way. It was a gamble. But we were pretty sure we had to do something different to everyone else. It worked. Now, we almost cannot see another solution."

Sustaining this success will be difficult but Viking are doing well domestically too. They are battling with Bodo/Glimt to retain their Norwegian title for the first time in over 50 years. The two clubs are level on points with just seven games of the season remaining.

The danger in Europe's smaller leagues is that only one club accesses the Champions League money and the rest are simply left behind. With both teams in the biggest competition this season, there is the prospect of a different dynamic emerging in Norway.

"Financially, it is a different world," says Nevland. "It gives you a very solid foundation, more freedom and security. It also gives you the possibility to sign different kind of players." But the aim is to use the increased resources to build something longer term than that.

"We will definitely look at our facilities, our training ground, our stadium," adds Bjorno. "We want Viking to be strong 100 years from now. What decisions can we make now to ensure that the next generation will have the opportunity to keep developing the club?"

Nevland agrees. They will not get carried away. They want to focus on enjoying this moment. "The biggest danger in football is that you lose yourself very quickly because you are looking for success all the time. There are a lot of examples of that happening at bigger clubs."

Viking know who they are and what this means. "Everything," says Bjorno. "We spend all the time we have trying to make the club better. When you see so many kids with Viking jerseys around the city, this is what it is about. It is bigger than life in so many ways.

"We have been there when it was very dark so we know that it is a rollercoaster. We are just looking forward to the rest of this journey." With trips to Aston Villa, Atletico Madrid and Napoli still to come for Viking, there could be many more twists and turns ahead.