Messi and Ronaldo break the internet by playing chess for Louis Vuitton
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, two of the most iconic football players of all time, are staring in Louis Vuitton’s latest campaign, and they appear to play a real position of chess!
“Victory is a State of Mind,” writes Louis Vuitton alongside the photo by the legendary celebrity portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz, in which Messi and Ronaldo are playing chess on a checkered Louis Vuitton suitcase. The photo was posted on social media a day before the opening of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, and chess fans picked up real quick that their position is actually from a real game!
As it turns out, the position on the board was from the game Carlsen-Nakamura, Norway Chess 2017. It was GM Magnus Carlsen’s second GM Peter Heine Nielsen who first pointed that out on Twitter, and then Carlsen commented on that tweet and the photo: “Second greatest rivalry of our time mimicking the greatest.”
“The original is from my game with Nakamura in Norway Chess 2017, a very tumultuous event for me. I ended up with minus one, and at several points during the tournament, I was in risk of dropping to number two or three or even four in the world. It was tough!” Carlsen commented on the photo.
Meanwhile, a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot gives us more footage on the making of this atmospherical photo and as it seems the football stars were photographed separately.
