Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have taken the competition off the field and onto the chess board in their latest Louis Vuitton advertisement.
Dubbed “Victory Is a State of Mind,” Messi and Ronaldo are seen staring intently at chess pieces placed on the checkerboard canvas of a Louis Vuitton Damier attaché case.
Annie Leibovitz photographed the campaign right before the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar.
Messi and Ronaldo have been known to dominate soccer for more than a decade. Between 2008 and 2017, both athletes won “Ballon d’Or,” the world’s best male footballer award every year. Messi has won it twice more since then.
Heading into the World Cup, the stakes are high for Messi, 35, and Ronaldo, 37, especially since neither of them have won the most coveted prize in sports. Nevertheless, Messi is planning to lead his country to victory for the first time since 1986, while Ronaldo hopes to do the same by helping Portugal win its first World Cup.
The French luxury house established its partnership with soccer’s international governing body FIFA in 2010. In addition to designing the travel case for the World Cup trophy, Louis Vuitton has launched a capsule collection featuring soccer-themed leather merchandise.
The campaign’s launch follows Louis Vuitton’s 2010 Core Values campaign, which featured football legends Pele, Maradona and Zinedine Zidane playing table football.
Photo credit: Annie Leibovitz/Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
