The biggest moment of Villyan Bijev's life came at half-time of a youth team friendly, and it involved Kenny Dalglish.
In that moment, the California-raised teenager was darting through to the Liverpool dressing room just moments after scoring a hat-trick for the club's Under-18s. The day was supposed to be his last on Merseyside, the final stop on a European tour that had included a trial with Borussia Dortmund.
His stay in Germany went well, but not well enough for him to get the offer he wanted. As a Bulgarian-American with a European passport, Bijev had several opportunities to train with teams during his teenage years, but only ever received offers on schoolboy terms.
Bijev's dream was not to get a schoolboy deal. His dream, from the moment he began playing at age five, was to someday sign a professional contract and, if that did not happen in the summer of 2011, the striker was ready to head to the University of Washington on a soccer scholarship.
It was somewhat ironic, then, that his three-week trial at Jurgen Klopp's Dortmund paved the way for one more big opportunity - a week-long chance with Liverpool in July 2011.
Having scored twice in his first game for the Reds, Bijev had to rush out of his second and final friendly despite scoring three goals during his brief time on the field. He darted towards the locker room to begin collecting his things. He had a flight to catch.
And that is where Dalglish comes in, kickstarting a professional journey that has sent Bijev from California to Liverpool to Bulgaria and, somehow, all the way back despite a series of failed moves, setbacks and life-changing decisions.
"It was the last day I was there and I actually had a flight already booked to go back home to California," the Sacramento Republic attacker told Goal. "I was only able to play the first half. I started that game, played the whole first half and had a hat-trick. I was leaving at half-time, went back to the locker room to change and grab my stuff and start heading to the airport.
"On the way to the locker room, my agent and Kenny Dalglish meet me on the way and Kenny's like: 'Hey look, we think you're a great player, we really want to sign you, what do you have to say about that?'. I'm just starstruck. He said it and I'm thinking: 'Without a doubt, yes'. There was never any hesitancy on my part. It was never a hard decision. I didn't even think twice. I immediately said, 'Yes, absolutely I want to'.
"So I signed the contract and I got a week to go home, pack up all my stuff, take care of everything, and fly back to England and start my journey."
That journey, as many do, did not always go as planned. Bijev was immediately designated to be loaned out as Bulgarian citizens were, at the time, struggling to obtain UK work visas. Bijev was obviously not in Liverpool's first-team plans anyway, so a move to Belgian side Genk was arranged to get him first-team experience.
After three weeks, that fell through. Genk were looking to alter the deal, as the club requested development rights and a percentage of any future sale. Liverpool disagreed, instead sending Bijev to German side Fortuna Dusseldorf at the last minute. Bijev and his agent drove the 70 miles from Genk to Dusseldorf as Bijev joined his third club in a matter of weeks.
That stay did at least last longer than three weeks, but for an 18-year-old thousands of miles from home, it is a situation that can become depressing. There is a feeling of isolation that comes with a loan spell in a foreign country, and Bijev struggled to adapt to his new life in Germany.
Back home, he was a star, but now he was the youngest player on the Dusseldorf squad. The club had no real incentive to develop him, as he was not their player. Bijev says he felt like he was routinely blamed by older team-mates who did not have the patience for his growing pains. Bijev, by his own admission, was not ready.
"I was always frustrated because, talking to people, I couldn't really say exactly what I wanted to say. A lot of times I had a hard time finding the words to try to translate. And if someone did speak English and I was able to speak English with them, a lot of other times they didn't speak it well enough to even understand fully. So not being able to express myself was definitely frustrating.
"I missed home a lot. I know a lot of players who have gone overseas talk about being homesick and how difficult it can be. And I definitely experienced that as well."
Being at Liverpool was more important than any of that. Following stints with Dusseldorf and Norwegian side IK Start, Bijev was fully integrated with Liverpool's youth teams in 2013 as he joined the club's U-23s. It was at Liverpool that Bijev often got to work with Brendan Rodgers and alongside players such as Raheem Sterling and Philippe Coutinho. He trained semi-regularly with the first team, as Rodgers looked to integrate the reserves and the senior group.
But Bijev's dream of being a Premier League star did not become a reality. He was released by the Reds in 2014.
"I think for any top club, if you can even bring in one, two or three guys from the second team it's amazing because you're constantly looking for the best and the best players in the world constantly want to play for you.
"So I think for a club like Liverpool, they constantly want the best players. If they have the best players and they can bring them through, great, and if they don't, they're going to get the best players from anywhere around the world."
With his career now in flux, Bijev headed to Bulgaria, his country of birth. Born in 1993, he is a bit too young to remember Hristo Stoichkov's heyday, but he idolised Dimitar Berbatov and, throughout his childhood, he worked towards his own dream of becoming a professional goalscorer. In some ways, it was a return to his roots and a new adventure all the same.
The Bulgarian top flight is no Premier League, but it is widely seen as a potential stepping-stone league. Players from Bulgaria often move on to Russia or Turkey, and moving back to his homeland gave Bijev a chance to find himself and reignite his career. After one season with Slavia Sofia, he joined Cherno More, where he helped the club win the Bulgarian Cup and Bulgarian Super Cup.
In recent years, however, Bulgaria's role in the sport has been in the news for the wrong reasons. Following a match against England last October, Bulgarian fans were given a two-match home stadium ban for racist chanting. It was not the country Bijev had grown accustomed to as he reflects on a dark day for the country's footballing reputation.
"I didn't personally experience anything like the England event while I was there, so I can't really speak on that too much. It did seem like an isolated incident and was unfortunate to see because that's not the kind of thing you want to hear about or the kind of things you want to happen, especially in a sport like soccer. But my experience there, it was good.
"It was hard. Playing first division soccer anywhere, even especially in Europe is really difficult. The first team I was going to was in Sofia. It was a great club and Sofia, it was amazing to see where I was born and kind of where my parents grew up and the culture that I come from, from that aspect.
"I had a Bulgarian agent who was great. My dad introduced me to him. And he brought me over and said: 'Score a lot of goals here and we'll move you on'. Unfortunately it didn't quite pan out that way. It's a great league to play in and great country to live in. It just didn't work out the way I had originally planned. Then because of that I made the decision that I wanted to come back to the States and refocused my goal to play in MLS."
Bijev, now 27, is looking to edge closer to that goal. He originally moved to Portland Timbers II in 2016, where he led the club in goals and the USL in assists during his first full season stateside. That earned him a move to the Sacramento Republic, a club that, at the time, harboured MLS ambitions themselves.
For several years, Sacramento pushed for a spot in MLS as the club emerged as one of the darlings of the American lower leagues. The 2014 USL champions, Sacramento smashed attendance records and remained near the top of the league on the field. In 2019, after several years of bids and several instances of being passed over, the city was awarded one of the final expansion slots and will be introduced into MLS in 2022.
The road to that MLS debut is long, especially for Bijev and the rest of the club's current roster. Over the next two years, Sacramento will build towards a major step up, both on and off the field. The club is set to build a brand-new, 20,000-seat stadium, but it remains to be seen which of the club's current players will still be there when the big day comes.
For Bijev, that brings uncertainty. After scoring eight goals and providing five assists in 2018 - his first full season with Sacramento - he scored just once in 2019. He started the club's 2020 home opener against FC Tulsa before the season was halted due to the coronavirus, but Bijev, like all players on the current squad, are playing in what is essentially a two-year tryout.
"I think we know that nothing's guaranteed. If you look at past USL franchises that move up to MLS and new MLS franchises that start, very, very few USL players continue on or are signed to the new franchises. So, if we're being realistic, everyone's not talking about it like we're all guaranteed anything."
Still, Bijev has found relative stability in Sacramento. He lives just hours away from his family, who frequently have the opportunity to watch him play. He is playing for a club that he believes is the best he's been with so far, for a variety of reasons. In Sacramento, Bijev has found team-mates he can connect with and that understand his quirky California references. And he has found a fan base that appreciates not giving up despite facing a few setbacks. There is a reason Republic FC are called "The Indomitable Club."
For most players, the first day of your professional career is not supposed to be the pinnacle. The hope is that it is just a start, the beginning of something much greater. And, for Bijev, that meeting with Liverpool legend Dalglish was a little bit of both - a high point and a starting point for a player whose winding road has led him to new goals and new adventures.
"The most special moment was signing that first contract," he admits. "That was just the biggest relief and a culmination of everything I believed in my life to that point, coming to fruition. Everything I worked for, everything that my family had invested in me. All this time and energy and effort we had put into building me up to be the best soccer player I could possibly be, and then signing that contract just made it like: 'Wow, it was all worth it'."
"[Sacramento] not giving up and persevering with those goals is something else that I really wanted to be a part of because a lot of other teams, they give up, or they're not able to put in the work necessary to reach their goals but Sacramento never stopped. That's why they say they're an indomitable club, an indomitable city. And I just think those are characteristics that I really wanted to associate with."