Pep Guardiola flaunts immaculate intellect with chess genius!

Courtesy of PUMA, Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has linked up with a genius of his ilk for an exclusive intellectual talk. Here's a look!

The story

Magnus Carlsen, a renowned chess genius recently had a talk with football's brainiac Guardiola, as the two of them were brought together by their commercial partner PUMA. 

The two great minds discussed some of their most memorable moments from their careers, opening up on strategies and tactics from both their sports. 

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"I have loved football since I was little. I played it every day. I did not come home from school; I just stayed at the school to play football. Then I came home to play chess. It turned out that I was better at chess, so I continued to do that", said the five-time World Chess Champion, Carlsen.  

The two sat and analysed specific goals and moves, highlighting the importance of strategy and dealing with the opposition's actions. The pair picked each others brain, with their conversation transcending to role of instinct and unpredictability in achieving success.

"I think the way you have to take defenders away with the attack depends on the movement of the opponent. You must pay attention to what the opponent does in every single movement and react to that. Magnus has two hours to make the next movement. We have a second to react or take a decision", explained Pep.

Pep X Chess

The Catalan tactician's relationship with chess has existed for quite some time, as Burnley manager and former City captain Vincent Kompany admitted earlier this year that Guardiola's chess-like approach molded him into a different footballer.

"He found a language for football that I understood and, from there I could start writing my own story. He made football closer to being objective than it had ever been to me before. That means if you have the right spaces, if you control the right spaces, if you make the right angles, if you attack the right areas that you have a bigger chance of one, hurting opponents and two, diffusing the strengths of your opponents," Kompany said about his former boss in April. 

"That chess type of approach suited my type of thinking, but I'd never had that before. I had amazing coaches and managers who taught me a lot of things before, but not the strategic side of the game. I think most players get it, that's the strength of it. Once you've experienced it, it's difficult to think in another way.

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