Viking's UCL journey and the rise of co-head coaches: Why two managers might be better than one

Are two coaches better than one? This is a question that teams around the world, like Viking FK, are trying to answer as they bring dual head coaches to the big stage in Champions League play. The Norwegian side aren't alone in their exploits, as Lyngby in Denmark and Lincoln City in the English Championship are a few of the clubs to join in employing dual head coaches, but they're among the most notable, as Morten Jensen and Bjarte Lunde Aarsheim were able to lead the club to a 3-3 draw with Bayern Munich in Champions League play. There may just be a method to the madness.

Viking were trailblazers on the pitch, appointing the duo in 2020, and they helped lead the club to their first Norwegian league title in 34 years, which sent them into the Champions League for this campaign. Jensen and Aarsheim had chances to interview for the role, but being good friends off the pitch, they suggested taking it on together, a situation that the club has no regrets about as they add to the improving stature of Norwegian soccer.

"When the former coach left us, we knew we needed another coach, and we started the interview process. We brought the two assistant coaches in for different interviews, and then when the interview came, they just showed up together," club CEO Eirik Bjorno said, reminiscing on how this came to be to CBS Sports Golazo in September. "It was their idea. We said we needed to pick one of you, and they said that they were going to do it together. At the end, we said, 'Let's do it.' It has been fairly successful so far; there is no difference between them. They are both head coaches. It's fascinating when we have discussions: I discuss one thing with one of them, and then another thing with the other one, and then we sit down all together to find a solution. I just created more work for myself; I don't recommend it, to be honest."

But while they took a route of forcing the club's hand due to their own relationship and wanting to work together, that's not the only way for this to come to be. At Lyngby, the club wanted to install a dual setup when their manager, Morten Karlsen, was fired in December of 2025. Andreas Bjelland was already at the club as an assistant but had never held a head coaching role. When Mikkel Jespersen was recently let go from Mainz, the club reached out. As Jespersen described it, "We talked about life, football, everything just to see if there was a connection, and luckily there was, and we took it from there step by step, and we jumped into the cooperation."

Bjelland echoes how important it was for those meetings to go well before they jumped into managing Lyngby.

"Because you have to work really closely, it also has to be a person that you work quite well with and can understand and talk to in all kinds of different matters in life," Bjelland said. "So the meetings leading up to the co-coaching were the thing that gave the right feeling."

The duo may not be breaking down the door for the Champions League yet, but their leadership led the club to promotion back to the Danish Superliga, Denmark's top flight, while they're also helping shape the future of American soccer, as USMNT international Neil Pierre was part of the promotion-winning setup and Diego Kochen is currently the starting keeper for the club while on loan from Barcelona. The club hasn't won the Superliga since the 1991-92 season, so their path mirrors an early stage of Viking's, where the immediate goal is steady improvement in order to establish themselves back in the top flight, and the teamwork that Jespersen and Bjelland bring to the club makes them well positioned to do so.

"We're quite different. I think that's one of the things as well that really makes a good team, is that as persons we're quite different and how we act in front of the players, our personalities and all that stuff," Bjelland says. "A little bit like a relationship that you have to be different than your partner, else it wouldn't work. And that's for me a little bit the same, even though we don't hug and kiss. We still have to know a lot about each other, but being different is also a big thing about it that gives us all the tools that we have, so that we can cover more."

Balancing the Roles

Differences in management are what bring a major challenge to balancing these roles. Bjorno spoke about needing to meet with both coaches about the same topics at Viking, and they've also opened up about how they need to work through disagreements when it comes to coaching decisions. You can't go out to the squad with one coach wanting to go in one direction while the other wants to go in the opposite, and that level of conflict resolution is something that these clubs go through behind closed doors ahead of time.

"Then we'll discuss, loudly sometimes, with the rest of our staff in the coaching room, and we will both have to defend our choices and reasoning to them," Jensen said in an interview with the Guardian. "We'll all discuss it until we have an agreement. But 99% of the time, we are pretty agreed in terms of who to use in a particular game, so it's very seldom we waste time over that."

Aarsheim added, "I can read Morten in one second. If he really wants something from his stomach, then I sense it: 'OK, let's go with that.' It's never been a problem."

It's similar at Lyngby, where the coaches have created a structure between themselves.

"We need to be really aligned in everything we do, and then the roles have to be really clear," Bjelland said. "So every day we know exactly who's doing what. So Mikkel has a lot of the things against the ball on minus three, and then I would have on the ball minus two. So everything we do is really structured. Of course, we discuss everything, and it takes some extra talks, and it takes some extra work to do, so we have to be pretty aligned in everything that we say and do."

The trust to know that a coach is saying what you'd expect when meeting with players is something that's built through working together, and when done well, it can make the job easier for those involved because you have someone to brainstorm with and work on tactical decisions with. In life, it's natural to have someone who can be a sounding board, and while assistant coaches can do that too, it's a different power dynamic than when someone is in the same position as you as a head coach.

"Yeah, it is. Especially when it's the first time both of us are head coaches," Jespersen said on the comfort of having a dual manager in charge with him. "It's nice to have each other to talk everything through. Also, when you're in doubt, it's nice to have someone who maybe has the same doubts as you to make the right decision."

It takes a particular style of group to make it work, but these clubs are using it with success, and it could be something that others try to emulate. Watching Viking perform and manage this at the highest level, others have already followed, with Lyngby and Lincoln City moving in the dual head coach direction in the past year. If that continues to catch on,  we may be seeing the buds of a new coaching revolution in the global game.

How to watch Viking vs. Sabah FK, odds

Date: Wednesday, Nov. 4 | Time: 3 p.m. ET
Location: Lyse Arena -- Stavanger, Norway
Live stream: Paramount+
Odds: Viking -240; Draw +420; Sabah +550

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