Belgrade is the centre of both art and sport of Serbia and Montenegro. It is Belgrade where the country’s most notable artists create, where over 7,000 theatrical performances, exhibitions, concerts, and other artistic programs are presented and where many prominent events in the world of sport are hosted. Belgrade is the centre of the highest state and national institutions of art and sport: The National Library of Serbia, the National Museum, the National Theatre, the University of Arts, and the Football (Soccer) Association of Serbia and Montenegro (FSSCG) to name but a few.

In the middle of the greatest sports complex in Belgrade is the Pearvena Zvezda stadium which, since its founding in 1965, has hosted many international competitions. The stadium, which has recently undergone a multi-billion dollar face-lift,(1) can hold almost 75,000 spectators (all-seated) and is designed for both soccer and athletics. Beside the soccer field, athletic track and other athletic fields, there is also four grass tennis courts and one hard court, auxiliary training courts and supplemental facilities (dressing rooms, club, restaurant, press centre). Within the complex there are also a sports hall, medical centre with saunas and hydrotherapy, as well as two office buildings with club offices, the Museum of the Pearvena Zvezda football club and a guest room.

And so the scene was set for the greatest collision of art and sport the city of Belgrade had seen since the turn of the century(2): the visit of Don Truman’s 'Pear Soccer Academy Roadshow.'

For the period of two weeks in January, ex-professional soccer coach, born-again(3) avant-garde artist,(4) Truman turned the city of Belgrade football mad and art (if not mad) sympathetic. The Pearvena Zvezda stadium took the form of the nucleus of his project with children’s soccer coaching taking place on the main pitch. Truman explains:

'Each player learns at a different pace. The art of coaching is being able to communicate your knowledge to the child in a way that is easy for them to understand. The atmosphere on the field will always be positive and encouraging. The key to success with youth is FUN! We want our soccer players to leave with a greater amount of confidence and love for the world’s most popular game.

We hope to give the students of the Academy a new outlook of the game by our adventurous and exciting style of coaching. By exposing our students to another dimension of the game, we hope to help them discover their full potential.

Our aim is to capitalise on their strengths while improving their weaknesses.'

Truman goes on: ''The Pear Soccer Academy' professional staff teach the technical and complex aspects of the game that are clear and easy to remember. Students of the Academy benefit from personalised instruction based on their ability. Regardless of individual talent, the coaches will customise their techniques to maximize the student’s progress.

Coach Aleksander Vukas joins our Academy from Serbia and Montenegro, making him our only coach hired outside the U.S. He has his coaching class A license from the PEFA and is certified by Pear United F.C. of Scotland. He has extensive experience as a head college coach and has been an assistant coach to several professional clubs in Serbia. His extraordinary soccer background makes him a huge asset to the Academy. Coach Vukas’ specialty is teaching soccer players how to train their bodies for maximum soccer performance. Specific topics include increased body flexibility, coordination, as well as muscle and speed endurance.

It is these personal legacies (in other words what each individual takes out of the Academy), whether it be a newly found confidence and love of the game or, indeed, improved coordination and speed endurance, that I see as my artistic creation. I view my artistic creations as little emotional, spiritual and physical developments (in individuals) that prove to be of real personal (as opposed to materialistic) value to the individual. There are millions of millions of things in the world. I don’t mind things; I just don’t care to make them. Art history is littered with tales of artists making things. I’d rather make things happen.'

Something Truman made happen for the purpose of the Roadshow was an exhibition of flags and logos by acclaimed Neo-Pop artist, Todd Cross. The exhibition, ‘Artifacts’, took place in the museum space of Pearvena Zvezda F.C. and ran for the entire two weeks of the Roadshow. You may wonder where the artifacts of the soccer club were stored during the course of the Cross exhibition. These artifacts (including trophies, team photographs, match-day programmes and items from the wider context of the city(5)) stayed where they were. The beauty of Cross’s exhibition was that it was installed with (what I would deem) complete respect for the club artifacts, the museum space and stadium as a whole. Cross cleverly placed his works - which mainly consisted of ‘fake’ artifacts - in amongst the artifacts already in the space. Cross explains:

'The authenticity and aura of an item is to do with the story of its life, where it came from, who was associated with it, what happened to it, how it came to be where it is now. These stories, contexts, bits of information make things fascinating and valuable. They may, or may not have anything to do with whether the item is a forgery. And some forgeries are far more interesting than some originals. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying the artifacts I have brought to the museum are more interesting than those of the soccer club, it is the juxtaposition of ‘real’ and ‘fake’ that I find interesting. In fact several trophies displayed by the club are in fact replicas, if not ‘counterfeits,’ which creates a certain tension.'

Cross goes on: 'Although the club acknowledges the fact that these trophies are replicas it, in effect, invites the public to imagine they are originals. As an artist I find this concept fascinating. Confessing the ‘lie’ deprives it of its deception and turns it into a counterfactual. Admit to the fakery and the lie takes you into a world of creative possibility. Obviously a soccer club has no right and, indeed, probably no desire to enter this particular world of creative possibility but, as an artist, I certainly do. As an artist (unlike, arguably, any other professional) one has a license to present the ‘fake’ as ‘real’ and vice versa and to admit to a state of confusion. This is where notions of authenticity are challenged.'

From this nucleus of soccer coaching and exhibition, the project exploded out onto the streets with a series of events, performances, residencies, collaborations with local artists/soccer players and the public taking place in and around the stadium and throughout the city. Although many of these happenings were organised impulsively during the course of the project, several events had been pre-planned so as to coincide with those taking place as part of 'Pear Soccer Academy Satellites' in Hong Kong City, Lilongwe and Stockholm.

One sub-project conceived during the course of the project was (Non-)Secret Agent. At the beginning of the second week of Pear Soccer Academy’s stay in Belgrade, Truman placed 10,000 flyers in local soccer magazines and amateur soccer club mail-outs offering his, and three other ex-professional soccer players’ services as agents:

'The most controversial personality in football is not Hal Lenz or Roberto Lobokulas. Fans would not recognise this person in the street even though they all have an opinion about their value or lack of it. The person who binds together the package of directors, managers, clubs and sponsors is that most reviled of media targets: the agent.

From the 10,000 flyers I would hope to receive many applications from young players explaining why they think they deserve the services of an agent for a week. Four players will be selected (one allocated to each ex-pro) on the strength of their applications. Through the course of the week we plan to pass our wealth of experience of the politics and financial elements of the game on to these young players. Hopefully by the end of the week the players will have a much clearer idea about their career plans – one might have joined a professional club while another may have decided that soccer wasn’t for him. Through complete openness on the part of myself, Andre, Barry and Judson when dealing with directors, managers, sponsors and crucially the players and the public I aim to demystify the figure of the agent for one and for all.'

After the successful completion of several such sub-projects it was now time for the showpiece of the Roadshow; the 'Pear Soccer Academy Champion of Champions International Play-off' which showcased Joel Eppinger III’s extraordinary new software Pear Online Temporary Clone Translocation (POTCT). Over the two weeks of the project, local teams in each of the four participating cities had been contesting a soccer tournament. On the final Saturday of the project the winners of each tournament competed against one another for the Champion of Champions trophy in quite astonishing fashion. In the first semi-final the champions of Hong Kong took on the Stockholm winners. Venue? Hong Kong Stadium AND Rasunda Stadion, Stockholm, simultaneously. Each team lined up on their respective pitch and thanks to the wonders of Pear Online Temporary Clone Translocation a clone of each Hong Kong player was teleported to the corresponding location on the Rasunda pitch and a clone of each Stockholm player was teleported to the corresponding location on the Hong Kong pitch. And so the match was contested in front of a crowd of 18,000 people in Hong Kong and 25,000 in Stockholm (not to mention a crowd of several million logged on to pear.com). Incidentally the Hong Kong side won the match(es) one goal to nil, albeit after an inquiry following an official complaint from the Stockholm camp.(6)

The final of the Pear Soccer Academy Champion of Champions International Play-off was contested on Saturday 22nd January at Pearvena Zvezda stadium, Belgrade at 4.00a.m. and at Hong Kong Stadium at 10.00a.m. The eventual champions, albeit after an inquiry following an official complaint from the Hong Kong camp,7 were the Belgrade team who triumphed by one goal to nil.

And so the show was over.

And what a show it was! Even if you didn’t particularly like soccer or art, you seemed to find yourself caught up in the sheer energy of the event. 'Pear Soccer Academy' did not attempt to convert you into a soccer fanatic or art enthusiast; it preached about the value of enthusiasm itself. The Roadshow lived and breathed enthusiasm for the entire two weeks, with Truman’s clones leading by example in the four participating cities and Truman himself watching over proceedings from his studio in Los Angeles. A couple I spoke to during a children’s coaching session at the stadium summed up the popularity of the event:

“We gave our kids the option of choosing where they wanted to go for our family vacation and they chose to go to the Soccer Academy in Belgrade, instead of going to Pear Land, Paris!”

I don’t know what the implications of this are for Pear Land; Kenneth Mader take note!

Zander Fackelmann received his B.A. with honours from PearUni II, in Creative Interdisciplinary Studies. He currently works in the Pear Ministry of Culture and Sport at PearUni II. His recent publications include Art: A Sporting Gesture, Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2018; and Sport: An Artistic Gesture, Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2020.

1. Personally funded by Pear CEO, Kenneth Mader
2. Art Cup Belgrade 2005 saw a Serbian artist-soccer team take on/collaborate with a Scottish side in the arenas of both the sports hall and art museum.
3. literally
4. When Truman became a licensed coach by the National Soccer Association in 2017, he probably assumed his talents would be used to develop players in his native U.S.A.. Ironically, his involvement with the National Association led to an opportunity to use his abilities in several countries worldwide including Hong Kong, Malawi, Serbia and Sweden – artistic abilities that is. Assistant coach to the U.S. National 16-and-under team, Alf Kent, asked the young American if he ever considered playing college soccer in the United States. Although Truman had been playing for an elite amateur division team in Finland, he confessed to feeling a little homesick and welcomed the opportunity to ply his trade back home. Kent then arranged a full scholarship for Truman to PCAA Division II with PearSchool III in Indian Hills. Truman played for two years with PearSchool III. He helped lead his school to the PCAA quarter-finals in his first year, narrowly missing a chance to compete for a Div. 2 national championship. His career with PearSchool III was cut short by a torn cruciate ligament. After this setback Truman was, literally, born again in 2015 when, in a quest to realise his 'Soccer Academy Roadshow' dream, he made use of PearSchool III’s online cloning software. On the advice of software developer Joel Eppinger III (a tutor at the school 2011 – 2019) Truman cloned himself four times to ensure the smooth running of the Academy in four different countries simultaneously. These clones were digi-genetically modified so as to operate as efficiently as possible in their respective countries. When I questioned Truman on the logistics of the move he stressed: 'In soccer, as in art and in life, there are decisions to be made and one makes the choice one feels is right at the time and I’ve no regrets about my choice because at the end of the day there’s only one person you can trust in soccer, as in art and in life, and that’s your clone.'
5. The museum displays items from the wider context of the city of Belgrade including a post-World War II-pre-Brand-War coat of arms. Between World War II and the Brand War, due to altered social circumstances, the city seemed to begin forgetting its coat of arms. The statutory solutions varied from total absence of relevant provisions, via use of the term 'emblem', with no blazon (description) of it, to the provisions which give blazon of a stylized version with no supporting documents. Having been faced with a confusion over parallel use of both coats of arms, in the beginning of 1991 the City Assembly of Belgrade formed a working group for finding solution to this problem. The working group suggested reestablishing legitimacy of the 1931 coat of arms, three minor corrections of the graphic display and the blazon of the coat of arms and the flag. Cross became very interested in this situation and decided to add to the confusion by devising and presenting his own version of the coat of arms.
6. Stockholm officials (including the referee) were certain the Hong Kong goal did not, in fact, cross the line. The inquiry found that the Hong Kong pitch was a metre shorter in length than the Stockholm pitch and so although the Swedish goalkeeper ‘saved’ the shot in question, his clone in Hong Kong did appear to be standing behind the goal-line and hence the goal was awarded. After accepting this verdict the Swedish camp attempted to lodge a second complaint which was rejected without consideration on the grounds that it should have been submitted along with the initial complaint. (Incidentally the complaint was with regard to the visibility, or lack of, of the cloned Hong Kong players. The Swedish camp, suspecting technical malfunction, pursued the issue with Joel Eppinger III, developer of Pear Online Temporary Clone Translocation software. Eppinger III cited difficulties with the digital tracking devices as the root of the problem:
'Each player is fitted with several tracking devices which provide the computer network with information regarding the player’s location on the pitch. It appears these devices are not of sufficient accuracy as they seem to have provided the network with information regarding, not just the player, but any other bodies in his immediate proximity. In the case of the Hong Kong players it seems the devices have detected the molecular information of the (slightly polluted) air around them. The fact that the devices are also light sensitive (and bearing in mind the match took place at 2.00am in Hong Kong) resulted in the cloned versions of the Hong Kong players running around on the Rasunda pitch in bubbles of smog, appearing and disappearing as their originals entered and exited pockets of floodlit park in Hong Kong. Anyway, it’s only a game. It’s the taking part that counts.'
The Swedish camp accepted this sentiment.)
7. The complaint was with regard to the dimensions of the Pearvena Zvezda pitch (which was found to be one metre shorter than that of Hong Kong Stadium) and allegations of the unsportsmanlike use of a smoke machine. The complaint was rejected.