June 15 will go down as the day football accidentally handed chess its best punchline in years. Four matches at the FIFA World Cup. Spain were held goalless by debutants Cape Verde. Belgium and Egypt trading goals to finish level. Saudi Arabia and Uruguay cancelling each other out. Iran clawed back twice against New Zealand to share the spoils. A clean sweep of draws, one of those rare days in World Cups where every match on a single day ended without a winner.
Football Twitter was still processing the chaos when Anish Giri arrived.
The Dutch grandmaster, ranked among the best chess players in the world and arguably the sport’s sharpest wit on social media, could not resist.
“Again all draws,” he posted, with the deadpan authority of a man who has spent a career being accused of exactly that.
“They have to shorten the time controls and make the game more interesting for the general public. Also terrible broadcasts with too many breaks. No excitement or stories behind the players. Football should learn from chess.”
The joke, for those who needed the footnote: chess has spent the better part of a decade wrestling with precisely these criticisms. The sport’s own fans have demanded shorter formats, livelier broadcasts, and a solution to the draw problem that has plagued elite-level play for generations. Giri himself was once the subject of relentless online fodder for drawing 14 consecutive games at the 2016 Candidates tournament. He was, in other words, the last person on earth with a standing to lecture football on draws, and he knew it.
Football Twitter, however, did not entirely get the memo.
One respondent fired back with considerable heat, arguing that football’s draws were born of genuine contest — neither team agreeing to share the point after nine moves, nobody “sitting around for 20 minutes thinking about how to kick a ball only to kick it two metres.” The Berlin Defence, chess’s famously dour drawing weapon of choice, was invoked. The post ran long. Grudging respect for Giri’s rating was offered at the end, which is the online equivalent of a firm handshake after a brawl.
“I mean I get the analogy but this is a low IQ attempt at sarcasm. Sure they were all draws, but none of these things agreed to a draw after move 9, none of these teams came with the intention of playing for a draw which you consistently do when you show up with Berlin in chess. More importantly, none of the players sat around for 20 minutes thinking about how to kick a ball only to kick the ball 2 meters. Ffs there are better opportunities for a chess v football analogy but you chose the dumbest, and the lowest IQ analogy and it’s not even shocking.
“That said I do respect your chess abilities, not a big fan of your playing style but I can appreciate that you are 500 rating points higher than me so surely you are better. But this take is just ridiculous,” the user posted.
Another replied with the kind of tribal gatekeeping that makes internet sports discourse such consistently compulsive reading.
“If you don’t know why Oyarzabal’s ball-touching time was a joke, or why Curacao’s goal made Advocate cry, you are just a watcher, not a fan. Go and train more chess, bro.” There is no known record of Giri subsequently going to train more chess.
What he did do was respond with characteristic serenity. “If you want to make football more popular, you have to find a way to make it more interesting for the general audience — not just experts like yourself.”
FINALLY, A REPLY THAT MADE HIM SMILE
The best contribution to the thread, which Giri himself acknowledged, came from someone who suggested football consider shuffling its starting line-ups randomly before each match.
“Surely they could come up with somewhere between 950 and 1,000 random formations which would be exciting.”
In the end, Giri surveyed the wreckage of his mentions and delivered his verdict. “I tried to get into football,” he wrote, “but the online community is so elitist and toxic that I am quitting. Back to chess.”
The grandmaster played. Drew. And went home.
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