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. 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.
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