About

Messi and Ronaldo Playing Chess is a Louis Vuitton promo photo of professional footballers Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo playing chess on top of a suitcase, posted in anticipation of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. After the photo was shared on Instagram and Facebook by both Messi and Ronaldo, it became a trending exploitable as it was photoshopped by meme creators who replaced what they were looking at or who was in the background.

Origin

On November 19th, 2022, both Messi and Ronaldo shared the chess photograph on Instagram,^[1][2] with Messi gaining roughly 29.9 million likes and Ronaldo receiving roughly 39.2 million likes over the course of four days (shown below). The image was also shared by the official Twitter^[3] account of Louis Vuitton who took the photo as a promotion for their brand and the 2022 World Cup. The tweet received roughly 338,200 likes in the same time period.

The Instagram posts quickly made headlines due to them allegedly being the two fasted-liked Instagram posts ever, both receiving over 10 million likes in only two hours.^[4] Soon after, memes and photoshops started emerging. For instance, the first-known, viral meme was posted by the Twitter^[5] account TrollFootball on November 19th, comparing Messi and Ronaldo playing chess to an imagined fistfight between their fans, gaining roughly 61,000 likes in four days (shown below).

Spread

On November 20th, 2022, multiple memes and photoshops surfaced across platforms, like a post from Redditor IamVenom_007 to /r/soccercirclejerk^[6] that photoshopped Andrew Tate into the template, gaining roughly 1,500 upvotes in three days (shown below, left). On November 20th, Instagram^[7] users anashussain2711 and huzaifa_salman_er posted a collab video that edited Messi and Ronaldo's heads onto angry chess players, gaining roughly 1,400 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References