Viking's chief executive Eirik Bjorno recalls the moment the Norwegian club scored against Bayern Munich in the Champions League. "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." Sporting director Erik Nevland preferred the second goal, which he called something the club had never dreamed of. The third goal guaranteed a draw on a night when Champions League football came to Stavanger, with Michael Olise sent off as Viking seized the moment.
For Nevland, the club means everything. The former Norway international left Viking as a teenager for Manchester United, later playing in the Premier League for Fulham, but his love for the club began much earlier. His mother worked for Viking, and he says he has dreamed about this moment since he was five years old. "It is the proudest time of my life," he says.
That pride is shaped by how far the club had fallen. Rock bottom arrived eight years ago in the second tier, when Viking lost 5-0 to Nest-Sotra in front of only 274 spectators in June 2018. "That was the absolute low point," Bjorno says. The club was promoted by a single point, and steady progress followed before Viking won the title for the first time in 34 years in 2025.
Nevland's blunt assessment of that period is that the club accepted it was bad and that something needed to change. Bjorno credits a broader upturn in Norwegian football, noting that the federation began ensuring clubs developed players. Still, he admits this alone does not explain Viking's rise, and the club's focus now is on building something sustainable for the future.
Source: Sky Sports Champions League · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing