LONDON ¨C Pep Guardiola kept up with the progress of a penalty shootout with a difference this week. It was in the World Chess Championship between Norway¡¯s Magnus Carlsen, the reigning champion, and Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin.
Their best-of-12 match ended in a dead-heat so the title went to a four-game tiebreaker, a series of rapid and blitz games and Norway beat Russia. It is chess¡¯ equivalent of a penalty shootout which is guaranteed to produce a winner though hardly an accurate barometer of a team¡¯s skill.
The Manchester City manager is fascinated by chess because the participants have to think as many as 10 moves ahead. During a dinner in New York with former world champion Gary Kasparov, Guardiola was eager to know the secret to a truly great chess player. The answer was concentration ¡ª he who concentrates best and longest wins.
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