The win extended their run of victories in the competition to five, with Sporting added to a list of defeated opponents that includes Manchester City, Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan twice.
Asked if the result would send shockwaves through European football, Knutsen was his usual sanguine self, never letting an individual result affect how he sees the progress his club is making.
"I think we're on a great journey now, and I don't think we should reflect too much on that right now - I think we should evaluate the game, what was good, what was less good, and then we should work on it," he told reporters.
"It's easy to be satisfied when you get to where we are now, and that's not a trap we should go into. We'll evaluate what was good and what was less good, and that's really what we've done in good and bad periods," he added.
It has become a familiar tale - a bigger club brings a squad bristling with talent to the minnows from the fishing town inside the Arctic Circle and promptly gets an unexpected, but well-deserved thrashing from a team made up of nine Norwegians, a Danish striker and a Russian-Israeli keeper.
Nothing Bodo do on the pitch is a secret. They invite their opponents to attack them, defending narrowly and then hitting them on the break, and it has proved to be a very successful formula.
"You see the hunger in the group of players, and you see how good they are at learning. There's something about that, and then we have a culture that gives people the opportunity to develop and be good," Knutsen explained.
On Thursday morning, he and his staff will sit down in their offices underneath the grandstand at the Aspmyra Stadium to plan their approach to the return leg in Lisbon next Tuesday, with a place in the Champions League quarter-finals up for grabs.
"It's so complex, but we have to be just as humble and hungry for what's to come," Knutsen said.
