From the Evansville Courier Press, October 4, 2009
EVANSVILLE — My father bought my son a chess board last Christmas, and as we walked the boy through the ideas and concepts of playing chess, things seemed very familiar.
The familiarity was not only with the tactics on a battlefield but on a soccer field as well.
As I started to research more closely, I found that two prominent professional soccer coaches, Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez and Inter Milan manager Jose Mourinho, were avid chess players. The more I started to study the relationship in tactics between both, I realized that chess was a practical training ground for soccer coaches who fancy themselves tacticians.
Listen to a coach in an interview and you may hear him use phrases like, "The defense is well-organized," "I can't commit too many numbers forward or I'll be counterattacked" or "I should use the flanks because their middle is too compact." These phrases could also be said by a master chess player.
Both games require players to attack and defend, to rely on width, depth and balance in both attack and defense. The same way your central defenders are covering and protecting that space in front of their own goalkeeper is the same way that defensive pawns might be protecting their king.
The similarities in the games are pretty clear — you must capture the other team's pieces or score goals without conceding anything on your end or side.
Both games offer a number of options when you are in possession and that every action has a converse reaction that can be countered. Both games rely on movement of all players or pieces.
It is not uncommon to hear coaches that talk about good teams say that "the sum is greater than the parts." That is also clearly the case in chess.
Teams that overachieve need to be able to look at the whole team as opposed to just individual players. Good chess players are also able to integrate key pieces into their overall scheme.
Most good chess players need to be able to play five to six moves ahead, knowing where their opposition will move and be ready to counter it. The same can be said in soccer for a very good passer in possession (knowing where your next pass should go before you even receive the ball) as well as for a good coach (preparing for how your opponent will play, and how to counter their decisions).
Both games also have a spontaneous and continuous rhythm to them — there are no timeouts and very few plays that you can dictate during the course of the game. This requires sharp instincts and quick decision-making, both for the players moving those pieces in chess or as they make decisions on the field (players) or off the field (coaches) in soccer.
There are certainly those who find both games slow and boring. Maybe scoring does not come as frequently or at the same pace as in other sports. Those critics probably have not either grown up playing these games or have never taken the time to sit down and see the games' art and tactics.
I did not grow up playing chess but have been so infatuated with its tactics that I have been regularly playing games online and researching great players like Garry Kasparov in the same fashion that I study soccer tactics. I have found that not only were there a lot of applied similarities in both, but that understanding one has helped me better understand the other.
It is not uncommon to hear an announcer refer to a closely played, well-coached game as being "chesslike." Maybe there's more to that than we think.
For any aspiring coach in sports where you defend a goal, a basket or a goal line and attack another, chess might be the way for you to regularly practice and fine-tune your skills.
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