My guest post at Pitch Invasion, which devotes quite a bit of space to women’s soccer and the culture of the sport. I’m flattered to be invited to contribute.

“Shinawatra’s money was all smoke and mirrors. At least this Abu Dhabi lot have got money, but that’s all they’ve got. They’ve taken my love, who Shinawatra turned into a whore, cloaked her in the finest of silk dresses and doused her in the most seductive of Arabian fragrances.

“She might look beautiful, but she’s rotten to the core.”

Foreign ownership of English teams is clearly a heated topic, but did you know that half the players in the Premier League are from places other than England?

Money in football has formed a dark cloud hanging over the English off-season, but thus far the sport hasn’t been pulled down too much by the recession. At least not yet.

The usual suspects are favored to win the title; will one of them, which has not won in the top flight in 20 years, break that long drought?

With Cristiano Ronaldo off for Madrid, is Fernando Torres the best player in England? And can he lead Liverpool to the promised land?

Chelsea is lookin’ good in the fashion capital of London. And how did Arsenal become so unfashionable so fast?

What will it take for the U.S. to finally win a game there?

Can the Yanks do it with just a short time in the thin air beforehand?

Landon Donovan says he’s not going to settle for a point. But he can’t be the only one to show up.

If you want to watch the match in English from your home in the United States, good luck with that. A local friendly watering hole might be your best bet.

It’s probably too much to ask CONCACAF to step in and prevent greedy media corporations for putting fans over the barrel like this. And not just Telemundo. ESPN says the Spanish language network’s charge for English-language rights was prohibitive but didn’t elaborate.

With all the attention — and money — ESPN has been paying to highly-watched but meaningless friendlies involving European club teams, and its new deals to show matches from the Spanish Liga, German Bundesliga and English Premier League, U.S.-Mexico just doesn’t rate all that highly right now.

If Mexico loses this match, its chances of reaching the World Cup will be severely dented. That would really affect the bottom line of the Mexican media monopolists.

The defending champions kick off the schedule Friday against Stuttgart without manager Felix Magath, who agreed before the end of last season to switch to Schalke (which has its own off-field preseason anxieties). But Wolfsburg did retain Bosnian striker Edin Dzeko, who’s now under contract until 2013 after bagging 36 goals a season ago. And Newcastle refugee Obafemi Martins has arrived to work up front with Dzeko and Grafite in a powerhouse attacking force.

Bayern Munich has the roster to assume its customary position at the top of the German league, but comes in after a rollicking off-season and the club still isn’t very settled.

Altough midfielder Franck Ribery is staying — for now — after being pursued seriously by Real Madrid, the French star was chastened when Bayern president Franz Beckenbauer questioned his desire to stay in Munich. Ribery’s back in training and has received an aplogy from Der Kaiser. Is this is the end of the ordeal for the “Bavarian Diva?”

New coach Louis van Gaal has other issues after inheriting this mess from the fired Jürgen Klinsmann. Is the slumping Luca Toni on the way out? Will Mario Gomez make a difference? Will he regret not signing a goalkeeper?

Schalke is dealing with some German Muslims upset over what they believe are defamatory lyrics against the Prophet Mohammed in the club’s anthem, which dates back to 1924.

Jorn Andersen guided Mainz to the second division title last season but he didn’t stick around long enough to coach even one match in the Bundesliga. He was summarily fired earlier this week after Mainz lost a friendly match, but the club said Andersen’s dismissal had more to do with the two parties having larger disagreements:

“Our strengths are teamwork, the togetherness of the team and the internal communication.

“Our approach and that of Jorn Andersen no longer matched, because the coach has gone in a different direction.”

German national team coach Joachim Löw will be watching the Bundesliga developments as he prepares for the final stages of World Cup qualifying and keeps track of his top players, most of whom remain at home. He says he’s not overly concerned about the increasing number of top non-Germans coming into the Bundesliga but instead thinks the domestic game — from youth development to the first division — has a lot to learn from how the elite leagues are organized:

“I see the top teams in the Premier League in England, or in Spain, and they are really high quality. I have spent some time with Arsène Wenger and Alex Ferguson, watching their training. It’s speed, speed, speed. The mentality is to go at high speed all the time. I’m talking about training. In the matches you can see it, but in training I have also seen unbelievable speed.”