Viking will play the biggest game of their modern era in mourning. The Stavanger club make their first Champions League league phase appearance at MHP Arena on Wednesday evening, hours after Norway holds the state funeral of King Harald V in Oslo.
The 89-year-old monarch died on 28 August. His funeral service began at Oslo Cathedral at 1pm local time, opened by a nationwide minute’s silence, before processions carried his coffin through a closed-off city centre to Akershus Fortress. Foreign monarchs from Sweden, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Jordan attended, alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prince William.
At MHP Arena, Viking’s players will wear black armbands, and the roughly 60,000 in the stands will observe a minute’s silence before kick-off, a tribute UEFA cleared and Stuttgart agreed to join.
“Nice that Stuttgart is joining”
Head coach Morten Jensen took the request to UEFA through the club and told Norwegian broadcaster TV 2 he was relieved it was accepted.
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“We really appreciate that UEFA has said yes to that. And it’s nice that Stuttgart is also joining in that marking of our king.”
A second armband tribute will honour victims of the recent flash floods in Nepal.
Thirty-four years back to the top table
Viking last featured in the old European Cup in the 1992/93 first round, and they have never before reached the league or group phase of European football’s premier club competition.
They qualified by beating Dinamo Zagreb 5-3 on aggregate in the play-off round, holding the Croatian champions to 2-2 in Zagreb on 18 August before captain Zlatko Tripić inspired a 3-1 home win in Stavanger eight days later.
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The Norwegian champions were then drawn into a league phase featuring Bayern Munich, Atlético Madrid, Napoli, Aston Villa, PSV Eindhoven, Feyenoord and fellow debutants Sabah, on top of Wednesday’s hosts.
A club run by two head coaches
Viking are one of the few sides at this level operating with an official co-head-coach arrangement. Jensen and Bjarte Lunde Aarsheim were jointly appointed in 2020 and continue to share the duties on the touchline, in training and in team selection.
The sporting task will fall to Tripić and his team-mates once the ceremonial is done. The captain, also speaking to TV 2, framed the mental switch bluntly.
“We have to concentrate on what we can do something about when the funeral is over.”
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Kick-off at MHP Arena is 6:45pm local time, with Serbia’s Nenad Minaković refereeing Sebastian Hoeneß’s Stuttgart against a Viking side wearing black on both arms.
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