from Dybala to Pulisic, who they are and why playing helps them on the pitch – Corriere.it

a small circle, almost carbonara compared to that of the playstation, but chess footballers are a growing team. Which with the summer retreats just around the corner can get bigger. To choose the coach you fly high, between Guardhouse and the super enthusiast Benitezconfidence in the emerging Maresca, who has just arrived at Leicester: also because his thesis for the Coverciano master’s degree is entitled Football and Chess, demonstrating a visceral synthesis between the two worlds.

Like some of his illustrious predecessors, starting with the Mago Herrera who claimed to prepare a course for all of Inter, Maresca tries to involve his players. Someone abandons the smartphone and becomes passionate, especially if challenges arise with other teammates: Pulisic has just landed at Milan – so passionate that he has tattooed a queen – who with Giroud will also be able to return off the pitch to the great games of the Chelsea days, where the The goal was to reach Kant’s level.

At Inter the specialist Mkhitaryan, who often plays on the field as if it were a chessboard, lucid and precise. But Handanovic is also a lover of the subject: in the chess team he has to deal with Unai Simon, goalkeeper for Spain and Athletic Bilbao. In Roja his challenges with Dani Olmo and the midfielder Zubimendi, youth chess champion, are very tight.

With this framework the team takes shape, but the undisputed star Dybala, provincial champion in Cordoba at 18: when the national level challenges came into competition with soccer, Joya dropped out, but still competitive. Also because chess is not just a distraction or a form of relaxation, but represents a mental stimulus that is also useful on the field: for the concentration they require, but also for the ability to choose the right strategy and timing.

Convinced of it Alexander-Arnold, winger for Liverpool and England, considered one of the best chess players with studs: he also challenged Magnus Carlsen, world champion from 2013 to this year and pupil of Simen Agdestein, a former striker who still played 8 times in Norway at the end of the 1980s. Among the defenders, the certainty Buongiorno from Turin, but pawns are missing. Who knows if it’s a coincidence or the role lacks strategy.