So we have been talking about this Super Secret Project X for the last month or so and we are finally going to show it off to you guys (in case you haven’t noticed it on the left hand side yet).  We decided to make a new shirt for the site and decided to showcase one of the site’s favorite things involving a player over there:  Sacha Kljestan’s mustache.

After getting the blessing from Sacha himself and finding a graphic designer who could pull off the design, we now have the shirts in our hands.  They were also printed on some awesome American Apparel tri-blend shirts which means they are super soft and of high quality (if I could marry a t-shirt, it would be the American Apparel tri-blend…….but I would also need help since I would be marrying a t-shirt).

They will be going up for sale starting next week with the price going to be in the $15-20 range (that price includes shipping as well).  Still working out all the pricing details (not looking to make a profit, just looking to cover costs).  And I am sure we will have giveaways and contests along the way for a chance at a free shirt.

But we are pretty excited for this shirt.

Aston Villa had their end-of-the-season awards dinner tonight/last night and Brad Guzan walked away with both Players’ Player of the Year and Supporters’ Player of the Year awards.  Congrats to Mr. Guzan.  He joins Stuart Holden (2010-11) and Clint Dempsey (2010-11 & 2011-12) among the list of Americans to win player of the year honors at a Premier League side.

With the end of the season, we now slowly turn to the silly season.  The Sun is reporting that West Ham United manager Sam Allardyce wants Guzan for next season.  Like most soccer transfer rumors on the internet, there is about a 5% chance it is true (if that).

RIP Gold Cup trophy.  It might have been weird looking, but as Howie put it earlier today, it was a part of CONCACAF’s strange charm.

There has been a little online chatter that Mikkel Diskerud might look back to Norway since he hasn’t been called into Klinsmann’s camps that much aside from January, but Mix turned down an offer to play with Norway’s U-21 team at this summer’s U-21 European Championship.  And I guess there is some speculation that Mix will play for the US this summer (my guess would be at the Gold Cup).

The US U-20 team will be at the U-20 World Cup this summer, but will be first playing at the Toulon Tournament in France at the end of this month.  Tab Ramos gave some quotes to US Soccer’s website about the tournament.

In the potentially really good news department, Anthony Brooks told Ramos recently that he is leaning towards playing with the US U-20 team at the Toulon Tournament in France.  My reaction:  good, good.

The fine folks at Top Drawer Soccer have some video interviews with U-20ers Benji Joya, Danny Garcia and DeAndre Yedlin.

And Ryan Bacic talked to potential U-20 forward Jordan Morris.  According to Brian Sciaretta, Morris had a really good camp last month and fits the current system well.

As for some things with this site, Howie, Jon and I are breaking down film (not really) and starting our process to select our annual OT XI for 2012-13.  Who do you think will deserves to be on the squad?  Let us know in the comments in case we are overlooking someone (if we are, I am blaming Howie).

And if you follow us on Twitter or Facebook (or have just looked to the left side of the side in the last 24 hours), you may have noticed a sneak peek of Super Secret Project X.  It is something that I am pretty excited about, does involve a player that is over there and should hopefully be revealed this weekend or next week.

I was finally able to switch the site to a new server/host and the site is up and back.  That said, I started the process last night around midnight, so we lost one Holden post (I will be posting a new one soon) and a couple comments since a couple things were posted on the old wordpress database before the switch became final.

It is nice to have a site that loads up in your browser in under 30 seconds again (I had flashbacks to the 56K modem days).

Lets start off with some site-related issues.  You may have noticed that the site has been loading really slowly over the last 24 hours and has its moments like this every so often.  I am currently in talks with the hosting company on trying to fix these issues.

As for the next issue, I know some of you who check out the site on their cell phone will sometimes have some “pay day loans” ad scroll across the site making it tough to read.  This site is not supposed to have ads so something is secretly embedding the ads and I am still working on getting this fixed as well.

As for a minor change that is sort of “fun”.  The comments now give you some Spacer Invader-like icon next to your name instead of the silhouette of the head when you post if you don’t have your own gravatar.

And finally, we are looking for a graphic designer for help with a project that could be really cool if we can pull it off.  What we need help with is outside my level of expertise with photoshop.  Please use the contact page to e-mail us if you are interested.

Now lets get to the links.

Our goal tracker was busy yesterday with Bobby Wood, DaMarcus Beasley and Herculez Gomez all scoring goals.  Also in action on Wednesday was Clarence Goodson in Brøndby’s 1-1 draw in the Danish Cup.

Mexico released its roster for the upcoming qualifiers.  And Jon Arnold gave ASN a quick rundown of Costa Rica’s roster.

Brian Sciaretta took a guess at the names that will appear on the US roster.  While Neil Blackmon takes a look at the US midfield.

If you missed it yesterday, the Gold Cup groups and schedule were released.  And this has sort of been rumored in the past already, but it looks like the June 18th qualifier against Honduras will be in Utah at Rio Tinto.

The always good for a couple of laughs Jimmy Conrad did a video interview with Jozy Altidore.

Brian Sciaretta caught up with Terrence Boyd to talk about his progress at Rapid Vienna and where he stands in the USMNT picture.

It now appears that Juan Ocegueda will not be able to play for Chivas Guadalajara and he can’t be sent to Chivas USA since he would have to enter a MLS lottery so he is in limbo land.

And finally, Anthony Brooks might miss this weekend’s game due to a cold (or thanks to Google Translate, he is just really cold).  And Brooks was called into Germany’s U-20 camp, although some say the U-20 team is not that serious compared to the U-21 team (the U-21 Euros are this summer) in Germany, so this could be a good thing for his US hopes.

Today is the site’s third birthday believe it or not.

I would like to thank Howie, David and Jon for their help on the site.  Howie is good at picking up the slack (especially in the morning when I am sleeping in on the west coast) and bringing his humor to the site.  About 50-75% of the links that I end up posting on this site come from David, plus he has been a nice addition with his weekend commentary threads.  And Jon is newer to the site, but his interviews and writing bring another dimension to the site.

But thanks to you guys for coming back to the site.  I do this for fun.  There are no ads, I am not trying to make any money.  And with you guys coming back each day, it makes it feel like the work we (myself and the guys mentioned above) do is worth it.  The site has grown a lot over the three years.  January 2013 is going to be our busiest (traffic-wise) in site history and we should break the one million hit mark (since day one) sometime in the next couple months.  We have slowly created a fun community.  I like to take pride that the comments on this site create discussion without name calling and other pointless behavior.

There is going to be some new additions to the site over the next couple months as well.  I am currently working on two USMNT projects with one hopefully going up soon, while the other one is still going to take some time to finish up.  So the site will continue to grow.

In honor of our third birthday (and the fact I am cleaning up my apartment and want to get rid of some boxes), I am giving the remaining few Over There shirts away.  Post away in the comments with your shirt size (only have S, M or L left) and I will try to get in touch with you by the e-mail you use to get a mailing address.

Hey guys, we are looking to add a person or two to help out with the site.  I had to take on some more responsibilities at work recently, which haven’t allowed me to update the site as much as I would like over the last couple weeks (I haven’t been able to do a good links post in a while).

I also know that it will be very hard for me to post highlights during the day on Saturdays for the next couple months (I probably can’t post highlights until late on Saturday night for a while), so we are looking for people with experience with Word Press and/or HTML for embedding highlights.

If you fit the bill, want to join our little staff of Howie and myself and want to help keep Over There going for the next couple months until I (hopefully) go back to my normal work schedule, please shoot me an e-mail at socceroverthere[AT]gmail[DOT]com or use the contact page.  Tell me about yourself and what experience you can bring to the site.

Probably looking for one person to embed highlights and one person to help out with scouring the internet for links and posting them.

After a few hours delayed at O’Hare, I have finally returned to Los Angeles.  The site will get back to normal this week, hopefully tomorrow.  Thanks to Howie for posting a couple things while I was gone.

LA’s lack of humidity > Chicago’s humidity

And The Black Keys are a damn good live band.

So we ended up giving away nine shirts instead of five (three for each size) and here are the winners.  Please message us on Facebook or e-mail us at socceroverthere@gmail.com with your mailing address to claim your shirt.  We will be doing more contests in the future for those that missed out:

Thomas Avery, Jon Arnold, Keri Smith, Kyle Sullivan, Trent Hill, Richard McGovern, Davis Leigh, Derby Thomas and Ryan Mack.

Like there is an unofficial one.

Anyways, I know some people were wondering why we didn’t have a guess the score contest for t-shirts recently.  I decided to give away five shirts for free, but wanted to give the OT facebook page a shot in the arm as I am trying to build that up a bit since not everyone is on twitter (and following Howie or myself).

So, if you want a free t-shirt, you must “like” our facebook page and post a comment under the official post with your t-shirt size.  All I have left is small, medium or large (sorry XL’s, but I am all sold out).

You have until Monday/Tuesday at midnight (so 00:00 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday) then I will randomly select five people as the winners.

Good luck.

After eleventy billion hours of flying, I am finally back in the US.  The site will return to its normal self in the next 24 hours.

I will also do a photos post from my trip some time in the next couple of days.  I snagged a lot of cool photos.

And in honor of Clint Dempsey’s 50th league goal, here is an Inside the Numbers piece from last month looking at other active Premier League midfielders who have scored 50+ goals.