Just as the FIFA World Cup for 2022 kickstarts, the luxury fashion brand Louis Vuitton captures this opportunity to release a campaign that surprised football fans.

The brand released a photo on Instagram of the two most acclaimed football nemeses, Ronaldo and Messi, coming together in a campaign for the first time ever.

This surreal sight involved the two playing a game of chess together and competing with each other. The signature pattern of checks was seen substituting a chess board in the photo release, using squares as spaces for the pieces involved.

What makes this briefcase chess-board campaign more special is the recreation of an iconic match that took place in 2017 between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura which has been mimicked through this image.

This was pointed out on Twitter by the icon Magnus Carlsen himself stating “Second greatest rivalry of our time mimicking the greatest.” He added: “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 was I in risk of dropping to number two or three or even four in the world. It was tough!”

Ronald and Messi both took to their Instagram accounts to announce the paid partnership, with the caption: ‘Victory is a state of mind.’

The muted campaign continues to stack ‘like’ counts on the platform for its brilliance in also putting forth the strategic mindset that goes behind playing football and also indirectly adding heat to the face-off that the audience will witness on the ground for the upcoming matches.

This LV campaign took some attention off Ronaldo’s controversial statements revolving around his football club and the launch of his personalised NFTs.

The campaign also smoothly transferred all attention to the player’s kind comments made on the same Piers Morgan interview for the fellow star of the LV campaign, Lionel Messi.

“Amazing player, he is magic, top,” Ronaldo told Piers Morgan.

“As a person, we share the stage 16 years, imagine, 16 years, we share. So, I have great relationship with him.”

Photographer Annie Leibovitz has been a part of numerous such campaigns but took the opportunity of bringing the “G.O.A.T” players together, considering the upcoming world cup that already has people anticipated and making this campaign a big success.