This is what you might call a successful publicity stunt. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, who unveiled a snapshot on Saturday evening, taken as part of an advertising campaign with Louis Vuitton (owned by the LVMH group, like Le Parisien – Today in France), on which they play together in chess on the eve of the kick-off of the World Cup, has become in just under 24 hours one of, if not the most liked photograph in the history of Instagram.
It must be said that the Portuguese (499 million followers) and the Argentinian (376 million) are the two most followed humans on the network. By posting each Saturday evening, around 7 p.m., the snapshot signed Annie Leibovitz, they both made a sensational entry into the top 10 of the most liked posts on Instagram. The photo is thus the most liked photo of Messi’s account (25.1 million) ahead of that of his signature at PSG (21.9 million). For Ronaldo, the post became the 3rd most liked of all time (31.9 million), ahead of rapper XXXTentacion’s last post before his death (30.2 million), and just behind… another photo of Cristiano Ronaldo, announcing the pregnancy of his partner Georginia Rodriguez in October 2021 (32.6 million).
In the behind-the-scenes images of this photograph, in which Ronaldo and Messi are playing a game of chess on two luxury leather goods trunks similar to the one containing the World Cup trophy, we can instead see that the two men didn’t take their half of the shot at the same time. A detail of realization which does not detract from the symbol that this one represents. For the two who are considered by many to be the best to ever play football, this World Cup in Qatar will undoubtedly be the last chance to add this legendary trophy to their roster. And, therefore, to win the game of chess that they have been playing for almost 15 years.