In April, the renowned Norwegian regional newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad published a comment piece on Zlatko Tripic entitled: "Viking's captain is not an arsehole. He embodies exactly the mentality we have long been looking for." Reigning champions Viking Stavanger were looking forward to their first Champions League appearance since 1992. "There is certainly plenty to discuss about what Zlatko Tripic does on the football pitch," the piece continued. "But his winning mentality is part of that long-awaited cynicism Viking will encounter in every single game in Europe."
A heated top-of-the-table Norwegian league match between Viking and Valerenga Oslo prompted the piece. Viking won 1-0, and after the final whistle captain Tripic celebrated in front of the opposition bench. A whole group of Valerenga representatives confronted him. Tripic got a yellow card, while Valerenga's Sebastian Jarl received a red. Norwegian football was left debating whether Tripic was an "arsehole".
At 33, left winger Tripic has mastered the art of provoking opponents just enough to get away with it himself, while they lose their composure and get punished. It happened against Valerenga, as it had many times before, and it happened again against Bayern Munich. Throughout the match, Tripic got on the nerves of his opposite number Michael Olise (and all the other Bayern players too). Olise eventually had enough, threw the ball in Tripic's face and was sent off for it.
Zlatko Tripic celebrates Michael Olise's sending-off
Sporting director Max Eberl said Tripic had played "like a dirty bastard". TV pundit Christopher Kramer said: "That Tripic fellow would have got on my nerves eventually too. As soon as the red card was shown, I thought: 'I feel you.'"
Asked for his view, Tripic said: "It's great that a player like that — who will most likely win the Ballon d'Or one day — gets a little annoyed by a boy from Lyngdal. I'm not as fast as Michael Olise, but I feel I have something in me that not everyone has. When I managed to draw his focus away from what he does exceptionally well, he eventually lost his composure and threw the ball in my face. I feel I won that duel with him."
Tripic won more than his personal duel with Olise. He also gave the match its final decisive twist. With a man advantage, Viking rallied and equalised at 3-3 in the 90th minute. After a 3-1 defeat to VfB Stuttgart in their opener, Viking had their first point of this Champions League season. This is their second appearance, following 1992/93, when Barcelona knocked them out in the very first round.
IMAGOZlatko Tripic: fractured skull in Fürth, king in Stavanger
At 33, Tripic is playing in the Champions League for the first time. Born in Rijeka, Croatia, he grew up in Norway and likes to refer to his "Balkan mentality". He spent the early part of his career at various clubs in the Norwegian league before joining German second-division side SpVgg Greuther Fürth in 2015, aged 22.
Fürth remember him less for his two and a half years as a squad player than for an incident in a Nuremberg nightclub. During a fight, he fell from a four-metre-high gallery and suffered a fracture to the top of his skull. Soon after his comeback, he left Fürth and joined Sheriff Tiraspol in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria.
Since 2018, Tripic has played for Viking, apart from a brief spell at Göztepe in Turkey. Revered as the "king of Stavanger", he now has the fifth-most competitive appearances in the club's history, the third-most goals and the most assists of all. This season, he has a sensational 23 assists in 28 competitive matches. Two came against Bayern Munich, though the incident involving Olise somewhat overshadowed them.
Yet another statistic stands out: Tripic has been sent off just once in 436 competitive matches. That puts him level with Michael Olise, among others. In August 2025, though, he also received a retrospective two-match ban after grabbing his opponent Adrian Pereira by the neck during a match against Rosenborg Trondheim, sparking a mass brawl.