In April, the respected Norwegian regional newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad published a column about Zlatko Tripic headlined: "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 debate about what Zlatko Tripic does on the football pitch," the column continued. "But his winning mentality is part of that long-awaited cynicism Viking will encounter in every single game in Europe."
The column followed incidents during Viking's top-of-the-table Norwegian league match against Valerenga Oslo. Viking eventually won the heated contest 1-0. After the final whistle, captain Tripic celebrated in front of the opposition bench, and a whole group of Valerenga representatives confronted him. The referee showed Tripic a yellow card and Valerenga's Sebastian Jarl a red. Mission accomplished. Across Norwegian football, people debated whether Tripic was an "arsehole".
For the 33-year-old left winger, provoking opponents is an art. He pushes them until they lose their composure and get punished, while he gets away with it. He did it against Valerenga, had done it many times before and did it again against Bayern Munich. Throughout the match, Tripic got under the skin of his opposite number Michael Olise and the other Munich 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 guy would have got on my nerves eventually, too. As soon as the red card was shown, I thought: 'I feel you.'"
Asked for his take, 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. With a man advantage, Viking rallied once more and equalised at 3-3 in the 90th minute. After opening with a 3-1 defeat to VfB Stuttgart, Viking claimed their first point of this Champions League season. It is their second appearance, following 1992/93, when Viking went out to Barcelona in the very first round.
IMAGOZlatko Tripic: skull fracture in Fürth, king in Stavanger
Now 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.
At Fürth, an incident in a Nuremberg nightclub left a bigger impression than his two and a half years as a squad player. During a fight, he fell from a balcony four metres high and fractured the roof of his skull. Soon after his comeback, he left Fürth and joined Sheriff Tiraspol in Transnistria, Moldova's rebel region.
Tripic has played for Viking since 2018, apart from a brief spell at Göztepe in Turkey. Revered as the "king of Stavanger", he now ranks fifth in the club's history for competitive appearances, third for goals and first for assists. This season, he has 23 assists in 28 competitive appearances. Two came against Bayern Munich, though the Olise incident overshadowed them.
Yet in 436 competitive appearances, Tripic has been sent off just once. That puts him level with Michael Olise, among others. Tripic also received a retrospective two-match ban in August 2025 after grabbing his opponent Adrian Pereira by the neck during a match against Rosenborg Trondheim, sparking a mass brawl.