Portland Timbers 2 midfielder Villyan Bijev has had an interesting professional soccer career. In 2011, after a massively productive tryout with storied English club Liverpool FC, Bijev signed his first pro contract. In 2014, when his contract with Liverpool had ended, Bijev traveled to his native Bulgaria, where he played for Slavia Sofia and Cherno More, before returning home to be with his family in California. This past March, Bijev signed with T2, where he has so far played in 17 games in 2016, tallying one goal and two assists.
What do you remember about Bulgaria and what was it like moving with your family to the United States?
Villyan Bijev: I was 5 years-old when my family decided to move to California. I don't remember too much. The plane was huge, I remember that. I remember starting school and we would have colored name tags – when I was here I was 5 ½ [or] 6 maybe – and one day my name tag changed colors because the teacher would always update them, and I couldn't find my name tag because that's how I related to it. I remember running out and getting my mom and telling her, “My name's not there! My name's not there!” But when I was young, I don't even remember learning English. Obviously I went to kindergarten and 1st grade and 2nd grade, but I don't have memory of the process of learning English because I only knew a few words when I moved here.
How did you end up at Liverpool?
VB: When I was pretty young – 14, 15 years-old – I realized that it was my dream to play professional soccer. That's all I wanted to do. That's all I really focused on. The only job I had outside of that was coaching soccer and my dad didn't even like that too much because it distracted from time that I could be training and working. So when I was 16, I started going on trials to Europe because I had the Bulgarian passport which opened up a lot of options for me. So I started going on a lot of different trials and Liverpool happened to be the last trial that I went on before coming back because I had committed to the University of Washington to go there for school. So it was the last trial I went on before coming back to get ready to start preseason UW. And [Liverpool] offered me a contract that I couldn't refuse. It was too good. It was something worth moving to Europe for at only the age of 18, so I decided to take it and I started there. I signed a three-year contract but we couldn't get a work permit the first year because of the rules in England and even with the Bulgarian passport it [still] didn't work. So I went on loan to Germany [with Fortuna Düsseldorf] my first year. Then I came back to Liverpool after that first year and we applied for a work permit again, didn't get one, and then I went on loan to Norway for the last three months of the season. I played with IK Start. That was also a really cool experience, great country, and then I came back to Liverpool the last year-and-a-half of my contract. I had the work permit and I was able to play there. Played in a few games, trained with the first team, got a real taste of the professional life at the high, high level. It was a great experience.
What brought you here to Portland?
VB: Once my contract finished with Liverpool, I and my new agent at the time made the decision to go to Bulgaria. That's where I'm from, I have the Bulgarian passport and everything, and he was a Bulgarian agent. So we decided to go there and try to use that as a stepping stone, a step up. I went to Bulgaria, signed a contract there with the team in Sofia, was there for six months and then got transferred to a team in Varna for one year…Then I finally decided that I missed home a lot. I really wanted to be in America. It was a professional and life decision. I made the decision to come back to the States. Portland Timbers are the best team in MLS; they had just won the MLS Cup and if I could play for any club in the U.S., this would have been the one I wanted to play for. So I got in touch with an agent and got a trial out here and then I think I showed really well. It just clicked. Since then, I've just been happy to be here.
Q. What do you think of Portland so far?
VB: There are so many places to just go and hang out: downtown, even in Beaverton, the surrounding areas of Portland. I really like the weather. The people are really nice. It's like an easy place to live. Nobody makes it difficult on you to be who you are and just do what you want to do and they can be [themselves] and I really like that about Portland.
