Chess: Levon Aronian switches to US as new regime in Armenia cuts support
Armenia’s world No 5, Levon Aronian, has upped sticks and announced that he will quit his native Yerevan and represent the United States in future. The 38-year-old, who memorably led his national team to Olympiad gold ahead of the Russian and American favourites at Turin 2006, Dresden 2008 and Istanbul 2012, will transfer to the billionaire Rex Sinquefield’s global centre at St Louis, venue of the annual elite Sinquefield Cup which Aronian has already won twice.
Aronian’s neighbours in town will include the world No 2, Fabiano Caruana (ex-Italy), and the world No 15, Leinier Domínguez (ex-Cuba), while his other new teammates will be the world No 7, Wesley So (ex-Philippines), the five-time US champion Hikaru Nakamura, and the rising star Jeffery Xiong, 20.
St Louis’s facilities include its chess club, open every day, and its World Chess Hall of Fame, fronted by a 14-foot tall king, state of the art computer programs, the legendary Garry Kasparov, and strong human trainers to help prepare for major events.
The writing has been on the wall for Aronian since 2018, when his friend, chess fan, and at that time national president Serzh Sargsyan, was deposed. Sargsyan had brought the victorious Olympiad teams home on the presidential jet, innovated chess teaching in Armenian schools, and attended Aronian’s wedding to the popular Arianne Caoili, who died in a car crash a year ago in March 2020.
The new regime slashed the chess budget, including support for Aronianhimself such as access to a super computer, and suggested that at 38 his time was past. Ironically, this decision comes just a few months after Aronian defeated Magnus Carlsenand Caruana with the black pieces at Norway’s Stavanger elite tournament.
Criticism has been directed at Sinquefield, 76, for buying up top talent, but international transfers are officially accepted by Fide. For a 2700rated elite grandmaster like Aronian, the USCF (in practice, Sinquefield) must pay Armenia €50,000.
One question for the future is whether Sinquefield will try to make a compelling offer to Alireza Firouzja, 17. The former Iranian prodigy is widely regarded as heir apparent to Magnus Carlsen for the world crown, and their growing rivalry may well be the major chess story of the next few years. For now, Firouzja is living contentedly in Chartres, France, and is expected to apply for French citizenship.
Sinquefied’s chess hero is Bobby Fischer and when he found himself on the same flight as the US legend over the Pacific in the mid-1970s he asked Fischer to “keep on beating those Russians”. Fischer promised, but then withdrew from chess for nearly 20 years. Fischer’s companion was the former Fide president Florencio Campomanes, so it seems likely that they were en route or returning from the abortive Anatoly Karpov-Fischer negotiations for a world title match.
The money was there, but the sticking points were Fischer’s insistence that the series should be for the first to win 10 games, draws not counting, and that the contest should be for the “Professional World Championship”, an unacceptable title for Moscow. It is a pity that the two greats never even took the opportunity to play a few five-minute games together.
Russia v United States contests have often been memorable, starting with the 1945 radio match when the USSR’s crushing 15.5-4.5 margin launched half a century of Soviet supremacy. A year on, over-the-board in Moscow, the US lost but Samuel Reshevsky beat Mikhail Botvinnik on top board.
In New York 1954, watched by 11year-old Fischer, the US had some good moments in defeat. In 1960, when the US students won gold on Soviet soil, Boris Spassky was blamed and banned from overseas travel.
Fischer’s four Olympiads brought three draws and a loss to Spassky, while
his 1962 game sparked Botvinnik’s quip that the American had only spoken three words to him in his life. In 1960 as they were introduced Fischer pointed to himself and said “Fischer”. At Varna 1962 , they sat down to play, bumped heads and Fischer said “Sorry” and at the end of the game he said “Draw”.
The 21st century Russia v US matches have been less memorable, but the meeting at Moscow 2022, the first Olympiad since lockdown, promises to be significant. The US team, with Aronian likely to be eligible, will be mostly from the world top 10, but Russia’s squad from the top 10-30 will be younger, ambitious and motivated.
Renewed interest in Fischer has been stimulated by John Donaldson’s recent 600-page book Bobby Fischer and His World which delves deeply into little-known areas of his life, and by the availability of videos of Fischer’s 1972 appearances on Carson Tonight and the Bob Hope Show.
Fischer also did a BBC interview (not currently viewable) on the eve of the match – This Little Thing between Me and Spassky. All of them show him good-humoured, articulate, and an evident hit with the audience, which provokes the thought that fans in the 1970s missed out not only on a potential classic Fischer v Karpov match, but also on
Fischer as an outgoing television personality, with his 9/11 rant, his antisemitism, and his mental illness all still in the distant future.
3713: 1 Rd2! c6 2 Kf2! Kxf4 3 Ne6 mate.
In January this year the Foreign Office urged the Rwandan government to look into allegations of “deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”. The logistics of this shouldn’t be too difficult. The allegations are against the Rwandan government itself.
Six months ago Paul Rusesabagina, the hotelier whose peaceable role in the 1994 genocide was portrayed in the film Hotel Rwanda, was bundled on to a plane in Dubai to face what his family have called a sham trial on terrorism charges.
And a year before that David Luiz travelled to Rwanda on a sensational luxury tourist holiday – all the better to illustrate what the then chief commercial officer, Vinai Venkatesham, called “the very compelling fit” between Arsenal football club and a country where public life is marked by “threats, intimidation [and] mysterious deaths”, according to Human Rights Watch.
Never mind that, though. Look away from the moral discomfort. Here’s David Luiz’s video diary. Here’s David Luiz stalking a gorilla, David Luiz nutmegging a laughing child, David Luiz walking through the forest in a soaking wet Arsenal tracksuit. David Luiz’s verdict? “I’m going to recommend all my friends to spend their holidays in Rwanda.”
Arsenal’s sponsorship by Visit Rwanda remains an oddity of the commercial-sporting nexus. There was a degree of surprise in May 2018 when the shirtsleeve deal was announced.
It has since puttered along in the peripheral vision, absorbed into the wider moral contortions of Premier
League life. Football has spent the past decade being bought and sold by sovereign states, used to puff, gloss and scour international reputations. What’s another friendly despot?
The difference with Rwanda is that, while undoubtedly a beautiful place to visit, it is also one of the poorest nations on earth. This isn’t a mini-superpower with surplus GDP tumbling out of its trouser turn-ups. Rwanda is not much bigger than Wales. The majority of its people live in poverty. It relies massively on foreign aid. And yet here it is paying out £30m to one of the world’s richest sporting clubs.
Two things have brought this into starker relief in the past few weeks. That three-year contract is up for renewal in the summer. And as the UK government statement suggests, the situation in Rwanda has become a source of genuine international concern.
Michela Wrong is a writer and journalist who has been covering Rwanda since the genocide. Her book on president Paul Kagame’s 21-year regime – Do Not Disturb:The story of a political murder and an African regime gone bad– is published in April.
“On a human rights front things have definitely got worse since 2018,” Wrong says. “Rwanda is one of the most repressive countries in Africa. You’ve got real poverty. Every election in Rwanda is rigged, everyone knows that. Worse, there is an unrelenting desire to hunt down and silence critics of the government abroad.”
This process, known as “transnational repression”, is a key theme in Wrong’s book, with the suggestion the Rwandan government silences dissent abroad via a secret service she compares to Mossad and the East German Stasi.
The government is essentially an embodiment of its president. Reelected in 2017 with a hugely impressive 99% majority, Kagame was a leader of the liberating armies after the genocide. He has been a darling of the world stage, cosying up to Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, and often tweeting about Arsenal in the final days of Arsène Wenger (Kagame was, reluctantly, #Wengerout).
“I think of [Kagame] as a very sinister figure now,” Wrong says. “He’s going to be there for life, he doesn’t have any successors, all his closest colleagues from when he rose to power have been killed or imprisoned.”
How does that fit with the branded gushing, with David Luiz’s trip to the presidential residence (the hand-slaps, the “PK” replica shirt)? Or indeed the account on the Arsenal website that describes Rwanda as “a leading reformer in Africa”.
The club are not willing to shed any light on the renewal of the deal. A spokesperson told the Guardian: “We never discuss the commercial terms or renewals of our partnerships, but we and Visit Rwanda are delighted with how things have been working since we launched together in 2018. As well as raising awareness of the country as a luxury holiday destination, we have also worked together to challenge perceptions and tell Rwanda’s incredible story of culture, heritage and transition.”
The schmaltz may seem a little galling to some. But there is at least a bracingly bullish amorality to Arsenal’s position on this. These are, after all, questions football needs to confront and untangle with a degree of honesty as it struggles to navigate a path between unfettered growth and expansion (also known as greed), and any notion of being selective over who it deals with.
Arsenal are right, too. According to Rwandan figures the campaign has been a success, lifting overall tourism numbers by 8%. Whatever the regime might be up to, Rwanda has a functioning tourist industry –; hoteliers, taxi drivers and everyday people who will benefit hugely from economic activity.
Where do we draw the line? Who do we deem acceptable from our own rather wobbly throne of judgment? Can we fly Emirates but not Visit Rwanda? Can we sell Saudi Arabia instruments of death but not a football club? This is simply football’s global landscape, a ziggurat of conflicting interests and messages, a place where nobody is really out of the murk.
For Arsenal, the question of whether to renew the Rwanda deal remains open. Perhaps Rwanda’s presence on the Covid travel red list will play a part. Perhaps the concerns of the Foreign Office will carry some weight.
This was always an unexpected fit. Set against English football’s muchtrumpeted moral rectitude of the past year, and couched as a simpering corporate partnership (David Luiz waving in a Jeep: meet the Gikondo street children’s transit centre), it looks increasingly strange.
Jürgen Klopp has claimed failure to qualify for next season’s Champions League would not damage Liverpool long term or prompt any player to seek an exit.
Liverpool’s prospects of finishing in the top four receded on Thursday when enduring a fifth successive home defeat for the first time. Klopp accepted the 1-0 defeat against Chelsea could undermine belief in his methods.
“If you want to doubt me and the team in this moment, I think that it is possible because of the results,” Klopp said.
However, he was defiant on Liverpool’s ability to withstand a season without Champions League football, and to avoid the internal problems that occurred when the club slipped out of the European elite under Rafael Benítez in 2010.
Klopp, who had spoken of the financial importance of Champions League qualification before the Chelsea defeat, said: “This club will not be a regular out of the Champions League. This year is difficult, we know that, but the potential and the power of the club is a completely different one. We have the squad together if they are not all injured. I do not know the team from 10 years ago, but we are ready for a battle in this era and with the team we have together.
“Seasons have momentum and we never really got it this year, that is true. But this club is in a really good position. It is a difficult time, obviously, but we are in a better position than other clubs I would say. I did not think about what happened in the past but what I can say is nobody has to worry about the future of the club because it is in good hands and has a really good team together.”
Mohamed Salah’s Liverpool future was under scrutiny before his angry reaction to being substituted against Chelsea. Salah’s agent, Ramy Abbas Issa, posted a cryptic tweet of a full stop during the game but Klopp claimed there would be no exodus of star talent should Liverpool fail to secure Champions League football.
“That is nothing we have to worry about,” the manager said. “I know we have loyalty from the players. It is not a situation where a player in the squad says: ‘We are not in the Champions League so I have to leave.’ That will not happen. I know them well enough to know that. The club is in a different situation and it will not be an issue with new players.
“We all expect more from us. I don’t feel that the team leaves me alone, standing in the fire. In this situation in Germany typically the CEO, or the president or the sporting director gives an interview and is asked: ‘Is he still the right coach?’ Then they have to say: ‘Yeah, yeah, we trust him’ and all those kinds of things. The first moment you have to say that then he is already halfway out the door.
“The situation in England is different, nobody above me speaks, but the situation in the club is pretty clear as well. The owners want me to sort the situation and I want to sort the situation with the players. That is the plan.”