Slovenia’s cool, but very hot football situation

Dober dan, it’s Ken.
※Dober dan which is “Hi” in Slovenian.

I came to Slovenia today.

Wow, this is the 31^st country we have visited out of 32 in the 2010 world cup nations in this "round-the-world-journey" series!

It’s “check” to concur all the 32 countries!

Our last country to visit is Algeria, but first we have to go back to Japan and applying for a visa at the Algerian Embassy there.  Still long way to go…

I wonder if you might think…
Oh? Didn’t we visit Slovenia last time?

Nope!

Last time was Slovakia.
This time is Slovenia.

Well, it’s almost same if I round up, isn’t it.

I emailed to a friend in Japan saying “I’m going to Slovenia”, he replied, “Oh, you mean Slovakia! Take care and enjoy!”

That’s kind of explaining everything about how well we Japanese know about Slovenia.

Speaking of this, it reminded me that a Slovenian once asked me “where about Japan in China?” with a straight face. 

They wouldn’t know any difference between Korea, China and Japan. We are same.

Anyway, the day before I was going to Slovenia, I was trying really hard to think how am I able to spot the football galore in this country, searching on the internet. (Yap, this is a revenge to what happened at Slovakia which was completely screwed)

And I found that there is a match clashing two teams based in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia on the same day I arrive!

So I changed my plan, got up at 5:00 am for 6am departure from Graz, took trains and buses all the way and managed to enter Slovenia in the morning.

It was raining when I hit the border, but the weather changed very quickly and I now have a clear, blue sky thanks to this mountain weather.

Weather is on my side for Derby day!!!

I checked in at a hotel but no time to waste. 

I decided to walk to the stadium which is a bit away from downtown.

I arrived at the stadium one and half hours before kick-off.

It’s already an hour and half to go. I had a bad feeling if the tickets were sold out…

My fear was quickly gone.

Nobody around the stadium!  Oops!

The box office was not even in the business yet.  orz

I had to kill the time after all. The box office opened its door finally just under one hour before kickoff.

I went on to the office and asked the price of the ticket…

Whopping 2.5 euros ! !ヽ(° ◇ °)

About 300 yen.

You can’t even go and watch a high school football game with this price these days. Amazing.
Still waiting, I was finally able to get into the stadium just 40 minutes before the match begins.

I couldn’t believe it. The derby match was proudly held in Ljubljana, capital city of Slovenia.

OK, guess how many people had come before me???

The answer is…

ONE ! !

I was the second! 

They didn’t even bother to open back of central stand

Well, it’s a typical overseas scene that people rushing and filling up a stadium just before game begins. Slovenian seemed to be no exception and "fairly" good crowd has finally gathered.

About 100 people were here in main stand.

It looks like full but it contains only in this section w

The game kicked off meanwhile.

The atmosphere is sadly mediocre JFL (Japanese Football Leagues) is far more entertaining. 

And to my surprise, the home team, called inter-block, has no particular groups of supporters.

Individual fans were seemed to be here and there but really missing action packed crowd cheering and shouting altogether.  Later I heard that the team is still quite new. No wonder.

I don’t believe there are any teams in Japan without any groups of supporters, even in the minor leagues.

I mean, I can’t compare it to Japan, can I?  I mean, is this an A leagues team in the country which gone through and qualified within Europe??

But opponent Veteran Olympia from also Ljubljana, with its long club history, had a small group of supporter.  The corner of back stand, away zone was flooded with its supporters.

Excited Olympia supporters went on the fire

Nevertheless, the degree of dangerous and excitement weren’t really a big deal here compare to the recent Greek national Derby or the match of Serbian Red Star.

Well, while the crowd was rather cool and quiet,

what happened on the ground was very hot and exciting.

I mean, odd 4 Red cards were surrendered in this game alone.

For Yellow cards, forget it, I lost track of it.

GK jumped out, gave a drop kick and gone with the Red card.

And hits with the elbow, the second player was gone also.

With sliding back charge, 3^rd is gone.

Thanks to sliding back charge, both teams in fisticuffs

Even the coach ending up with red card result of vicious protest 

I have never ever seen the game that 4 players and a coach were sent to sin bin.

Dare to say, but it would make more interesting if 10 were gone.

※However, according to the rules, the game should be forfeited if three people are gone from one team, as far as I remember. I have never ever come across that sort of game though.

Well, we had two Slovenian teams entertained us with a world-class martial arts. I now wonder that they have been fighting through European qualifiers with such fantastic martial arts under their belt.

I believed that a team becomes stronger, the more popular they become. And so does nation’s passion and supports grow. But it doesn’t seem to apply to Slovenian case.

I learned later on that Slovenian footballs have hard time to fill up the stadium, according to the documents which were showed to me by Slovak Football Association secretary-general.

※ I will explain why I was invited to see such documents in another occasion.

Be doubtful when they say 15,000 spectators in a game.

It also reasoned why people aren’t interested in football here, is because many players from national team are playing with international leagues, not domestic.

Well, after I watched such a dynamic domestic league, and was tired from travelling, I decided to be rich and eat at sushi restaurant right next to the hotel.

Here, the atmosphere is very good and they have Japanese sushi chef, serving authentic, real sushi.

The chefs said,

"Just day before yesterday we had Mr. Moriyama from Nagoya Grampus. "

Hmm, Libero’s power of attraction has rarely missed the catch. Pity.

In addition,

"Once, we had Mr. Hide Nakata who dropped in by himself, really casually. Oh, yes, he still ordered no vegetables.”

so he said.

The sushi chefs and I have our photo taken for this good occasion.

 From left, Chef Kaneko, myself and Owner-chef Mr Fujita.

By the way, they gave me a booklet which came in with today’s newspaper for trading cards of World Cup players you can collect.

This page is for Japanese team. There are pages for each teams and each blank space for each players.

The trading cards sold separately (※) and you can paste them to the individual space provided. 

※ Pieces 300 yen for 10 or something like that.  Cost of 10 cards equal to a bag of chips, or a ticket of the match I have just watched today if you like.

I was fascinated and thought it’s a good business idea of distributing such booklet for free. It makes attractive to soccer fans make them want to buy more cards.

Don’t ask me why, but in this booklet has only 17 card spaces for each team. And this is how 17 members consist in Japanese team according to the booklet, in case you wanna know.

World first, I announced the players of Japanese team for you.

And only 17 of them. Duh.

GK Kawashima , Narasaki
DF Nakazawa , Tulio , Uchida , Konno , Nagatomo , Abe
MF Hashimoto , Honda , Hasebe , Nakamura ( ken ), Matsui, Endo, Nakamura ( Shun )
FW Okazaki , Okubo

There are 7 half and 2 forward.  Very Japanese I’d say…

Anyway, my first day in Slovenia went on like that.

Oh, apparently the World Cup trophy is coming to this country tomorrow, so I’m gonna go and see it! 

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