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What do Pep Guardiola and Enzo Maresca have in common?

Coaches wedded to a certain style of football? Midfielders who became managers? Worked together at Manchester City? Bald? All of these things are true, but that’s not the answer we have on the card.

The answer we’re looking for? Chess.

Both men, who meet at Stamford Bridge this afternoon, are keen proponents of the idea that football can learn plenty from chess, and they as coaches can take valuable lessons from it too.

After leaving Barcelona in 2012, Guardiola took a sabbatical and travelled to New York, where he met with Garry Kasparov, the Russian grandmaster. He has also studied the methods of the world’s top-ranked chess player, Magnus Carlsen.

“You have no idea how similar the two things are,” Guardiola said in Pep Confidential, Marti Perarnau’s book about his first season at Bayern Munich. “There was one thing Carlsen said that I loved. He said that it doesn’t matter if he has to make some sacrifices at the start of the game because he knows he is strongest in the latter stages. It got me thinking and I must learn how I can apply it to football.”

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Maresca dedicated large tracts of his 7,000-word coaching thesis, written for his diploma at the Italian coaching school Coverciano, to chess. “A coach can only benefit from acquiring the mind of a good chess player,” Maresca wrote. “I concluded that playing chess can train the mind of a coach. The fundamental element of chess is the logic that leads a player to understand and thus predict the opponents’ moves.”

Maresca also highlighted the two games’ tactical similarities. “The chess board is like a football pitch that can be divided into three channels — a central one and two external ones. In football as in chess, an inside game can be more interesting as it’s the quickest and most direct towards goal or the king.”

The similarities in how space is used also came up in an interview with Carlsen and Guardiola. “In chess and football, the important thing is to control the middle,” Carlsen said as Guardiola looked on, rapt. “If you control the middle, you control the pitch or the board. Another thing is that in chess, you attack on one side, so you overload, and then you switch so you have an advantage on the other side. In terms of space, it’s remarkably similar.”

https://t.co/YJ6z1TzEGC pic.twitter.com/FGoU6mn02M

— Jon Mackenzie (@Jon_Mackenzie) December 12, 2023

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Most people reading this piece will know why ‘controlling the middle’ is important in football, but an explanation in chess might be worth making. “Each of the pieces moves differently, but nearly all of them are better in the centre,” Gawain Jones, a grandmaster who recently won his third British Championship, tells The Athletic.

“It’s one of the first maxims you are taught: get your pieces out and control the centre squares, and starve your opponent of space and they’re hemmed in at the sides. The knights are referred to as ‘octopuses’ because they can move to eight squares, whereas if they’re at the side they can only go to three or four.”

In his book Football and Chess: Tactics, Strategy, Beauty, Adam Wells draws further parallels. “At the most fundamental level,” Wells writes, “football and chess involve using space effectively and getting the timing right to break down an opponent’s defence while preventing them from breaking down yours.

“And that’s it. There are very few limiting rules. There are no complicated scoring systems or procedures of play that have to be followed. It is clear cut: you must capture pieces or score goals while staying within the confines of the board or pitch.’

The list of football coaches and managers who apply chess to their profession is lengthy. During the European Championship this summer, Switzerland coach Murat Yakin was asked about a match being a ‘poker game’, to which he responded that he doesn’t like poker because too much depends on what hand you are given, and that he prefers chess.

“There are certainly parallels when it comes to tactics,” he told magazine Schweizer Illustrierte before the tournament. “I explain simple (chess) moves to my daughters: which steps they can make with which piece, how they have to think ahead and how to safeguard their tactics. If I set a strategy for the team, I have to be able to explain easily what I mean exactly.”

Rafa Benitez is a keen — and very competitive — player, which fits with the perception of a manager who doesn’t so much see 11 human beings running around on a football pitch, more 11 pieces that he emotionlessly shifts.

Maybe the most enthusiastic chess player in football management is former Barcelona and Villarreal coach Quique Setien, who used to compete in tournaments. At one point, he was so highly rated that, according to an interview with the Spanish newspaper Marca, he could have represented “51 of the countries at the Chess Olympiad”.

“As many as you wish to find,” he told Marca when asked about the similarities between football and chess. “You can be an offensive player, but you always need to control what’s going on in your camp, without leaving pieces unattended, in a synchronised way. The same happens in football when you have a coordinated team, in which all the players are connecting.”

Borussia Dortmund coach Mathias Kolodziej is watched by staff and players (Alexandre Simoes/Borussia Dortmund/Getty Images)

Perhaps slightly more surprising is the number of footballers who swear by chess.

Mohamed Salah told Sky Sports in 2023 that he was “addicted” and is rated at around 1,400, which, according to Chess.com, puts him somewhere between ‘decent’ and ‘proficient’. Salah mostly plays online, with a username that is his actual name with a bunch of numbers after it: he said he enjoys messing with people who ask him if he actually is Mohamed Salah.

Christian Pulisic almost seems to play as much chess as he does football: for him it’s partly an emotional connection, having been taught the game by his grandfather (he has a tattoo of a queen on his arm, with Mate, his grandfather’s name, beneath it), and partly a distraction because he started playing again regularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s an incredible game that can help you with a lot of things, like problem-solving or seeing different patterns,” Pulisic told the Daily Mail in 2021. “I’m not saying it directly correlates to me being a better footballer but it’s certainly better than staring at a screen, gaming. It can really help you to stay sharp in your head — you have to think very quickly.”

New Barcelona midfielder Dani Olmo believes chess can inform his use of space. “On the pitch, I try to think about every movement,” he told Sky Sports, “not just to move left because the ball is going left. I am always trying to find the best solutions when I have the ball and when I do not have the ball. Either for me or the team-mate, to create space for other guys or even for myself.”

This tallies with something Jones tells The Athletic. “Chess tactics tend to focus on pattern recognition,” he says, “recognising that there is something not quite right with the opposition’s tactics.”

For Anthony Gordon and Trent Alexander-Arnold, chess is more akin to brain training. “Chess is a life skill because it applies to everything,” Gordon told the BBC this year. “It’s a very peaceful game. It gets my brain working, which I love.”

Alexander-Arnold played Carlsen in a game arranged by sponsors in 2018: predictably he was routed in 17 moves, but you don’t have to be able to compete with the best player in the world to benefit. “It helps with concentration,” Alexander-Arnold said. “Because it takes a lot of concentration throughout both games to really focus on what your opponent is doing and how they’re trying to attack and hurt you. I think you can take notes from both of them and use them in each other’s games.”

The Liverpool defender isn’t the only player who has faced Carlsen, himself an almost obsessive football fan who, for a while, topped the world rankings in Fantasy Premier League. Pulisic, Martin Odegaard and former Real Madrid midfielder Esteban Granero are among those who have faced Carlsen.

Magnus Carlsen, chess champion, FPL master (Koen Suyk/ANP/AFP/Getty Images)

Others just use it to pass the time: Harry Kane took up chess after watching Netflix drama The Queen’s Gambit and has continued at Bayern Munich, playing against team-mates Joshua Kimmich and Kingsley Coman. “I use chess to switch off,” Kane told GQ. “It’s such a mental game. You have to focus on every moment, every move.”

During Euro 2024, the Netherlands squad travelled around Germany by train and on these long journeys, Bart Verbruggen and defender Stefan de Vrij would set up a board and play a game or two.

Chess also has a firm place in the language of football, but perhaps erroneously. When a match is likened to ‘a game of chess’, it’s normally a cypher for ‘this game is slow and boring’.

A more generous interpretation would describe a very controlled, cagey match, which fits the perception of chess. Jones argues that chess is a much more reactive game than that, which strengthens the link between it and football. “It’s much more chaotic than we would like to think,” he says. “It’s good to have a long-term plan, but you can’t just stick to it: it’s all about adapting your plan to what your opponent is doing. From that perspective, it’s much more like a team sport. You have to be reactive.”

Players or coaches are often said to be thinking three or four moves ahead, but that’s a misnomer. “I don’t think it’s that practical,” says Jones. “It’s more about thinking one move ahead. It’s just about making the right move. There’s always the idea of balancing your plan and your opponent’s. There will be some calculation involved, but chess is understood as a much more dry, mathematical game than it actually is.”

There are reasons to be sceptical about the influence of chess on football. The obvious difference is footballers are sentient while chess pieces are not: a chess player can have a plan and enact it while only worrying about their opponent, whereas a football coach has to rely on 11 independent human beings doing as they’re told.

But even if the realistic influence is relatively thin, there are ‘marginal gains’ that explain why coaches are so keen on chess. Someone like Guardiola will do or study almost anything if they think it will give them even the smallest advantage. “He does it with anyone who can contribute any small idea to continue progressing,” Marti Perarnau, Guardiola’s biographer, told the Spanish journalist Kike Marin about the manager’s meetings with Carlsen.

Like anyone who is good at anything, Guardiola and other football managers take inspiration and influence from many different sources, but that so many elite figures look to chess tells you the strength of its influence.

“If we’re the ones initiating the action, as opposed to simply reacting, then we’ll control the flow of the game,” Guardiola says in Perarnau’s book Pep Guardiola: The Evolution when describing similarities between chess and football. “The opponents then have to react to what we do, which automatically means a limited choice of options. It makes them more predictable.

“It’s a cycle: you take control, show that you have the upper hand and then you slam home your advantage… this is what it means to eclipse the opposition.”

GO DEEPER

How Pep Guardiola takes inspiration from other sports

First as tragedy, then as farce.

Same tournament; same umpire. New players; new court; new call.

Same outcome: tennis shooting itself in the foot.

After midnight on Saturday morning in Cincinnati, Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime was match point down to Britain’s Jack Draper in the deciding set of their round-of-16 match. Draper served out wide and moved in to volley; Auger-Aliassime dipped a return at Draper’s feet. The ball spun up, clipped the net tape, and rolled over.

Draper smiled and walked towards the net for a handshake, believing he had hit a fortuitous winner; Auger-Aliassime walked across to the deuce side of the court for 40-40, believing the ball had hit Draper’s side of the court on its way over.

There was a pause. Greg Allensworth, the umpire, who was also in the chair for the electronic line calling (ELC) malfunction with Brandon Nakashima and Taylor Fritz on Thursday, spoke into his microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am ruling that that was a fair shot. Game, set, and match Draper, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4.”

Then it began.

“If there was a replay then I’d replay it, but I don’t know,” Draper said.

“Did you not see the ball bounce on the floor?” Auger-Aliassime asked Allensworth.

“Like after he hit it?” Allensworth asked Auger-Aliassime.

“You’re going to get out, and it’s going to be everywhere, and it’s going to look ridiculous,” Auger-Aliassime said.

There was no need to get out and wait for it to be everywhere. There was no need to wait for the four-minute discussion that inevitably ended in no reconsideration of the decision. It was already ridiculous — and not because of the officiating.

After Thursday night’s incident between Fritz and Nakashima, in which Allensworth was unable to intervene and reverse an incorrect non-call from the Hawk-Eye ELC system, the ATP Tour took swift action.

“After recent technical issues with Live ELC in Montreal and Cincinnati, we have conducted a thorough review of our protocols. Going forward, if the review official determines during a rally that a ball was out earlier in the point (but was not called by the system), that decision will stand,” the tour said.

This incident should occasion a similar review of video replay in tennis. In the case of Draper and Auger-Aliassime’s match point, Allensworth has to decide the following things in a matter of milliseconds:

• Does Draper volley the ball or half-volley it? This affects whether or not the ball can follow the trajectory it ends up taking.
• Does he hit the ball into the ground?
• Does he hit the ball with his racket twice? If yes, Allensworth has to rule whether or not he has done so in the same motion.

Oh my! 🫣 pic.twitter.com/FazKHlOKY9

— Stefanos Tsitsipas (@steftsitsipas) August 17, 2024

Replays appear to show Draper knocking the ball into the ground on his side, before it spins back off his racket and high into the air. If there is a double hit, it is in one continuous motion, so would not be ground for losing the point under tennis’s rules. The ball hitting Draper’s side of the court after his racket, however, would mean Auger-Aliassime winning the point.

Instead, Draper wins the point and the match. But even with video, this decision is close; there are clues to the ball having hit the court after the racket in its final trajectory, including its arc and height, but not a definitive frame. What definitely unfolds? Another failure of tennis’ refereeing infrastructure to protect players and fans.

Draper, Auger-Aliassime and Allensworth were all let down (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

Draper should not have to defend his integrity when trying to pick up a ball, nor should he have to consider conceding a point. Auger-Aliassime should not have to explain to an umpire that he can be proven wrong after his opportunity to win a match is lost. Allensworth should not have to be the sole arbiter of an incredibly tight call with just his eyes, while fans watching both live and on TV can see replays he cannot act on — even if they are not conclusive.

Questions of sportsmanship and decency will necessarily come up — Andy Roddick memorably gave a point to Fernando Verdasco at the 2005 Rome Masters when up a set and triple match point, after the umpire refused to check a ball mark. Roddick lost that match — but players should not have to mete out their versions of what is fair in a sport that has rules and protocols to prevent them from doing so. Even if Allensworth were to have reviewed the footage and not overturned it, it would have allowed all three people in question more closure on the situation than guessing about their instant impressions of a moment.

“We can look at it after the match and if I see it wrong, I’ll admit it to you,” he told Auger-Aliassime.

“That’s too late,” the Canadian said.

There are good reasons the use of video replays sometimes meets resistance — one is that it cannot be in place for all events. At this year’s U.S. Open, which starts on Monday, August 26, only three-quarters of the singles matches will have video replay covering them. Situations may unfold when the same call gets overturned on one occasion because of video, but gets left in error on another because it is not available on a different court.

A wider introduction would see tennis reckon with many of the growing pains football has gone through, including a clearer realisation of how much is predicated on subjectivity that a camera can’t eradicate. But tennis creating problems for itself like this is a tragedy. To continue to do so when there are simple ways to avoid it? A farce.

(Top photo: Frey/TPN via Getty Images)

Maybe we should have known right from the start that this was going to take a while.

Panathinaikos’ Argentinian midfielder Daniel Mancini stepped up to take the first penalty of their shootout against Ajax, the Greek side having scored a late equaliser to force the Europa League qualifying tie on Thursday night to go to spot kicks.

But while he did technically ‘take’ the penalty, he might as well have just blown on the ball for all the force he put behind it when he kicked the thing. A pathetic penalty that 40-year-old goalkeeper Remko Pasveer saved easily was the most appropriate way to start a shootout that featured slapstick, rank incompetence and occasional bursts of excellence.

In total, there were 34 penalties. That, we probably don’t need to tell you, is a UEFA competition record. In all, 25 were scored, two missed the target entirely and seven were saved — five by Pasveer and two by Panathinaikos goalkeeper Bartlomiej Dragowski.

Ajax, who went second in the shootout, had five ‘match points’ — penalties would have won the tie — and flubbed the first four before emerging victorious.

Striker Brian Brobbey was brought off the Ajax bench during extra time, perhaps not explicitly to take a penalty (there were 10 minutes remaining when he came on) but certainly with a shootout in mind. He was one of the 12 players who had to take two penalties. He missed them both. What’s more, both of them were potential clinchers.

Missing one penalty in a shootout will bring deep shame and embarrassment, but you’ll get over it. Missing two is the sort of thing that could haunt you for years. Missing two potential winners… well, at least his side won in the end.

After that first (terrible) penalty from Mancini, the next eight were very smartly taken by, among others, Steven Bergwijn, Kenneth Taylor (both Ajax) and former Leicester City winger Tete (for Panathinaikos).

Then it started to get weird. Brobbey stepped up, and there seemed to be an expectation that he would make short work of this: he isn’t a regular penalty taker, but had only missed one in his senior career and had a prolific conversion rate as an academy player. The home crowd chanted his name, he puffed out his cheeks, hit it with reasonable power to the ‘keeper’s right… and Dragowski saved it. The air left the stadium like it had suddenly become a spaceship’s airlock.

Is it possible to ‘morally’ miss a penalty that you actually score? If so, that’s what the Greek side’s next taker, Dutch midfielder Tonny Vilhena, did. He is a Feyenoord youth product and spent eight seasons in their first team… which is another way of saying the Ajax crowd hated him.

He struck a low kick to Pasveer’s right, and the goalkeeper got down well to get more than a hand (an arm, perhaps?) to it…

… but the ball squirted from underneath him, briefly looked like it might stay out  — to the point that the Ajax fans started to celebrate  — but eventually span across the goalmouth and trickled into the opposite corner.

Vilhena, having heard the thoughts of the home crowd, decided to give a bit back by shushing the terraces. Would this come back to haunt him later on in the shootout? Surely not.

Next up for Ajax was Jordan Henderson, perhaps as much to remind everyone that he still plays for them. Henderson and penalties are not especially good friends: it’s easy to forget because England won, but he missed in their shootout victory at the 2018 World Cup against Colombia, and has since only taken one competitive penalty in regular time for club or country… which he also missed for England in a pre-Euro 2020 friendly against Romania. Happily, he didn’t have any problems here, side-footing straight down the middle and into the net.

GO DEEPER

Jordan Henderson – the serial winner who is now just an idea for fans to hate

Then, another miss: Nemanja Maksimovic erred for Panathinaikos, saved brilliantly by Pasveer. But again Ajax couldn’t take their chance, with Bertrand Traore skewing his effort both high and wide, which is quite difficult to do from 12 yards. It was after this penalty that a squabble broke out in the centre circle, both teams getting tetchy at this extended shootout, and referee Chris Kavanagh booked a player from each side.

The next penalty was Panathinaikos’ Sverrir Ingason, who went low but too close to Pasveer, who bagged his third save. At this stage, he and opposite number Dragowski hugged and started laughing: yes, it was getting quite silly now. And it got even sillier when Ajax passed up yet another chance to win it, as Dragowski saved from Ajax defender Youri Baas.

This was the penalty shootout that nobody seemed especially keen to win. On the touchline, the look on the face of Ajax coach Francesco Farioli suggested he was watching himself undergo open heart surgery. His opposite number, Diego Alonso, looked similar.

However, the next 14 penalties were all excellent, with the goalkeepers barely having a chance. They took kicks themselves and scored with minimum fuss, only ramping up the tension. After all, 14 penalties is a full normal shootout and a half. The Panathinaikos substitutes and coaches, arms locked on the touchline, were told off for encroaching onto the pitch. At some point, Farioli retreated from the touchline and sat alone on the bench, his aorta pulsing about two feet in front of him.

But then, another chance to win it for Ajax: Panathinaikos centre-back Filip Mladenovic tried to go for power, but it was too close to Pasveer who saved to his left.

Redemption presented itself. Just as he had earlier in the shootout, Brobbey strode forwards knowing that if he scored, Ajax would be through. He stepped up, puffed out those cheeks again, resolved not to make the same mistake again — this time, he wasn’t going to let Dragowski get anywhere near it.

And he didn’t — the trouble was that the only people who did get anywhere near it were in the back rows of the Johan Cruyff Arena. Brobbey launched an absolute Chris Waddle of a penalty high into the stands…

… and then proceeded to crumble to the turf…

… face down, unable to believe what he had just done…

… providing a classic ‘you can see the exact moment his heart breaks in two’ moment…

But wait. Here comes Vilhena. You’ll remember from earlier that the former Feyenoord man had shushed the Ajax fans after (just about) scoring his first penalty, which you can understand: he was getting abuse, he scored, and his work was done for the night because there’s no way he would have to take another penalty, right?

Ah. Alas for him, he was facing the extraordinary Pasveer again. The 40-year-old isn’t Ajax’s first-choice goalkeeper, but he took his chance to make an impression here: Vilhena tried the same penalty as his first but this time, Pasveer got more of his body behind it and kept it out for his fifth save.

“Five is quite a lot, yes,” he deadpanned after the game, also saying that he was laughing with former Ajax midfielder Wesley Sneijder, on the touchline working for Dutch TV, during the shootout. “I save a penalty now and then, but I don’t think you often experience something as crazy as this.”

Pasveer last saved a regulation-time competitive penalty in 2021, in the Eredivisie while playing for Vitesse against Heerenveen. The last shootout he was involved in was again for Vitesse, against AVV Swift in the KNVB Cup (Dutch Cup) in 2017. He didn’t save any that night.

Ajax goalkeeper Pasveer celebrates during the shootout (Nikos Oikonomou/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Remko asked why there was never a picture of a goalkeeper who has kept a clean sheet,” Farioli told AFP, referencing the many photos of Ajax greats that adorn the stadium’s walls. “I told him he should maybe play a bit better. But now I think we should quickly hang up a picture of him.”

Once more, Ajax had one kick to win it. This time they did something interesting: whereas the other players who had taken a second penalty had done so in the same order as the first round, Ajax mixed things up by sending winger Anton Gaaei up for their 17th penalty, in place of Henderson. He went low into the bottom corner, Dragowski went the wrong way and finally, finally, finally, it was over.

From the moment Mancini took the first penalty to Gaaei’s winner hitting the back of the net, 24 minutes and two seconds had elapsed. Ajax won 13-12 and progressed to the play-off round. If they beat Polish side Jagiellonia Bialystok they will qualify for the Europa League league phase.

This wasn’t the longest penalty shootout of all time. That title still belongs to SC Dimona and Shimshon Tel Aviv, who took 56 penalties in the Israeli third-tier play-off semi-final earlier this year.

But from Pasveer’s saves to Brobbey’s brace of misses and Farioli’s utter despair, there was more than enough drama to go around here.

Ajax face NAC Breda in their second Eredivisie game of the season this weekend. You suspect a nice, quiet, boring 1-0 win will do them nicely.

(Top photo: Nikos Oikonomou/Anadolu via Getty Images)