Timbers' Kristoffer Velde didn’t come back to adapt. He came back to lead

"We're going to kill them in May when we play against Miami."

BEAVERTON — Kristoffer Velde returned to Oregon with the same energy he departed with back in November.

Remember, it was two months ago when Portland’s 2025 season came to an end and the Norwegian DP left the Timbers’ exit interviews with a departing message:

“I think the standard needs to be higher,” Velde said then. “What we do in the training ground. What we do in the gym. We have so many players with so much quality. The potential is there. We just need to get it out of them.”

Velde had just played two months with Portland at that point — and left for Norway frustrated. He arrived in August as a signing from Olympiacos, and playing on the European calendar, his year was just beginning when he joined the Timbers.

Then it was over.

So yes, Velde said, he approached this offseason differently than in years past. Instead of simply getting in shape, he wanted to make sure he was as sharp as possible heading into his first full season in MLS.

“I don’t think I was on the treadmill for one time,” Velde said. “I was just playing soccer back in Norway with my hometown clubs since they were in season. I don’t know if I broke any rules by doing that. But I came back healthy. I came back strong.”

And he came back ready to lead.

The Portland Timbers are just a week into preseason training for the 2026 season, and while there are some notable changes to the roster, much of the group from the team that fell to San Diego in the first round of the playoffs returns.

Stalwarts like Diego Chara and Finn Surman are back. So, too, are Antony, Felipe Mora, Juan Mosquera, David Da Costa, Kamal Miller and goalkeeper James Pantemis. This isn’t like the run-up to the 2025 season, when the Timbers were dealing with the uncertainty of Evander and retooling the roster to get younger.

This is an experienced, veteran club that, according to manager Phil Neville, is ready for someone like Velde to take charge.

“I saw those comments and loved his comments,” Neville said of Velde’s exit interview. “What I would say is, going back to my playing career, the players have to drive the intensity. It’s up to Kristof. He’s now been at the club for three, four months and we absolutely love him. I think everybody in Portland loves this player.

“He has to grab hold of the club and go take us to a championship.”

Part of that starts with himself.

Velde joined during Portland’s stretch run, when the club needed him to score goals. And while he was often around the net, Velde didn’t score until his 10th match with the club and finished the year with just two goals.

“Was a little bit ashamed that I started to play so good — or scoring goals — in the last games,” Velde said. “I wish we could go further, but now I got the feeling of how it is being in America, playing soccer here and getting to know my teammates. I don’t need that adaptation now.”

Scoring goals will be massive for the Timbers in 2026. After potting 65 goals in 2024, Portland scored just 41 in 2025 — with zero goals in four of the club’s final six matches.

Velde is expected to be the team’s primary attacking weapon, especially with Da Costa — the club’s other DP — potentially missing the first few weeks of the season while recovering from offseason shoulder surgery. And while the back line looks solid with the returns of Surman, Miller, Mosquera and the addition of New England’s Brandon Bye, the one clear hole heading into training camp in Coachella is in midfield.

Last week, the Timbers sold midfielder David Ayala to Miami for $2 million.

General manager Ned Grabavoy said the club was faced with a simple decision: keep Ayala, who was in the final year of his contract and had expressed interest in playing outside MLS in 2027, or cash in now.

“I think we were left with a decision of, do we keep a good quality player here who is a good professional and a good kid, knowing that he’s ultimately going to walk for free,” Grabavoy said. “Or do we try and at least find the ability to bring back in some funds and some money and try to use those immediately, and in the future, to strengthen this squad? I think it got to a place in terms of the money, and taking everything else into consideration, where we felt like we should probably stay aggressive with it, make the deal, then retool from there.”

Ayala, 23, joins a Miami squad that won the 2025 MLS Cup and features his childhood hero, Lionel Messi — a club that doesn’t retool so much as reload for another title run.

That’s fine, Velde said. He wished Ayala the best.

But now that Velde has a feel for his own club — and the ball, after what he called a very different offseason — the 26-year-old isn’t about to pull any punches.

Not in his own locker room. And especially not against the competition.

“We’re going to kill them in May when we play against Miami,” Velde said in Spanish.

It was a spicy quote — exactly the type Neville expects from his new team leader.

“He’s got the personality to do it. We haven’t had that in a while, since the Diego Valeri days,” Neville said. “We haven’t had a DP that’s gone, ‘Right, this is my club, this is my stage and I’m going to make us to a championship and put my name in the rafters.’”

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor