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The original was posted on /r/soccer by /u/junglejimbo88 on 2024-10-09 02:57:44+00:00.
Extract/ Quote:
The football-mad world No 1 is in London playing for a $1m prize fund and despite dominating the chess world says he has never played the perfect game
One small measure of how Magnus Carlsen has made chess cool came on Thursday afternoon, when the world’s best player walked through a London cafe tailed by school kids repeatedly shouting one word – “Magnus! Magnus!” – as they attempted to grab selfies on the run. Yet such is the ripple effect of the chess boom, fuelled by the pandemic and the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, that the game has been catapulted into far more unexpected spaces.
England’s Harry Kane, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Anthony Gordon have all spoken about their love of chess. Chelsea’s manager, Enzo Maresca, wrote a 7,000-word thesis on how it can help train the mind of a football coach. Last year Mohamed Salah admitted he was “addicted to chess”, had a rating of around 1400 – well above average – and namechecked Carlsen. “I’m not Magnus, but I’m good,” he said. “No one has a chance with Magnus. But hopefully we will play one day.”
So would Carlsen be up for a game against the Liverpool striker? Of course he would. “I’m a huge football fan and definitely a fan of Salah,” he tells the Observer. “I’ve not met him yet but I would certainly love to – as well as other sports people who I admire who play chess.”
In 2018, the Norwegian routed Salah’s teammate Alexander-Arnold in 17 moves in a game that lasted five minutes. So is there anyone in the Premier League who might fare better? “Martin Ødegaard plays a little bit,” says Carlsen. “He was playing a lot for a while, and then not so much. He’s not a bad player, but he’s kind of private about it.
“As for the best, I don’t know. There are a lot of decent players. But I don’t know if there are any very good players among the sports people I have faced.”
Such is Carlsen’s love of football that in 2020 he even topped the official Fantasy Football rankings, ahead of 7.3m others, before ending the season in 10th. But this year, he concedes, isn’t going so well. “It’s horrible,” he says, smiling. “I don’t have Erling Haaland. I’m a bit of a casual these days.”