Ljubljana’s only jazz club is threatened with closure. On June 10, the paper Finance wrote that this was a further manifestation of the disappearance of urban culture in the Slovenian capital: “Ljubljana is being guided by a mediocrity that negates the talents and people with vision without which there could never have been any progress. In Ljubljana a mentality of working-class provincialism and petty bourgeoisie predominates. A town with a jazz club is never just a village. A capital without a jazz club is not a capital.”
Whatever Finance thinks, Slovenians have talent for soccer (members of the team pictured here). They may very well defeat the USA in South Africa today. The G20 establishes one kind of hierarchy, the World Cup another.
“The Americans are in a precarious position in Group C,” one commentator believes. “They tied for second with England with 1 point, trailing Slovenia, which has 3 points.… The game Friday is a can’t lose game.”
There is much at stake, though not for the great American public. So far, only elites pay attention. According to Michael J. Agostino in the Atlantic, “The culture of soccer has become a badge of liberal cosmopolitanism. When you consider the timing of this trend, perhaps the adoption of soccer was a rejection of Bush/Cheney 2000s provincialism.”
Canadians, not just Canadian elites, to judge from the plethora of national flags happily affixed to their cars these days, are passionate about the World Cup.
In Canada, the heart beat is global. What is more global, more “egalitarian,” than the World Cup, which makes Americans tremble with fear of the Slovenians who may be about to lose their one and only jazz club?
Eric Koch’s new book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
It should be remembered that one of the versions of the World Cup gave us an interesting concert by the Three Tenors. Some of us found that more interesting than the games.
Some of us had tenors and not soccer in our childhood.
Even better, Serbia beat Germany. The revenge of 1914. Princip is cheering from hell.
Princip had nothing against the Germans. It’s the Austrians he didn’t much care for.
But the Serbs had good reason to take revenge for what the Germans did to them in WW2.
So what does 2-2 do to the prospects of that jazz club? Will England spark things up a bit, or was the US the prime opponent?
Every four years one can get enthusiastic about world soccer, but to have to actually spend 90 minutes watching all that running around without scoring … that’s often enough.
Did you say scorning or snoring?
Don’t forget that Archduke Otto of Austria said the Slovenians are really Austrians who speak another language.
No, I didn’t know that.
What a fabulous description: ‘guided by a mediocrity…’ That applies in so many situations.