The chess world got another potential boost when two of the world's greatest sports athletes, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, last week appeared playing chess together in a Louis Vuitton campaign. The Instagram post has now become the most liked in history.

Legendary photographer Annie Lebowitz' photo for French clothing brand Louis Vuitton of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi playing chess went viral last week, and is now the most liked photo on social media platform Instagram.

Since it was published on November 19, a day before the start of the Football World Cup in Qatar, Ronaldo's post has been liked more than 40 million times, while Messi has more than 30 million likes taking the combined amount to more than 70 million. The most liked post on Instagram currently has 56 million likes, according to this list.

It may look like the two legends are actually playing a game of chess against each other, but in a behind-the-scenes video it became clear that it was shot separately and then later put together.

It was also revealed that the position on the board wasn't chosen randomly. The position is actually the last few moves of the round 3 game between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura in Norway Chess in 2017, a game that ended in a draw.

Danish Grandmaster and Carlsen's second Peter Heine Nielsen was the first to point that out. The Norwegian shared the tweet and jokingly called Messi and Ronaldo the "second greatest rivalry of our time mimicking the greatest".

Being asked about the game and the post during the Tour Final in San Francisco, Carlsen said:

"The original is from my game with Nakamura in Norway Chess 2017, a very tumultuous event for me. I ended up with minus one, and at several points during the tournament, I was in risk of dropping to number two or three or even four in the world. It was tough!"

The photo was shot in connection with Louis Vuitton's new campaign "Victory is a State of Mind", which is a follow-up to the 2010 campaign with football legends Pele, Diego Maradona and Zinedine Zinedane. Having the two arguably greatest footballers in history for this campaign, does make sense and it also makes sense that another great is featured in it.

But who came up with the concept to feature chess in the campaign, and who chose the position?

The idea apparently came from Antoine Arnault, director of communications at parent company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and son of the World's second richest person in the world, Bernard Arnaut.

“The idea of them coming together to play chess came to me after watching my 15-year-old stepson spend hours watching chess championship games on YouTube,” Arnaut said in a statement.

Ewan Lawson, Chief pf Press, told NRK that Bruce Pandolfini, who was a key consultant for Netflix' mega hit The Queen's Gambit, chose the position and made sure it was one that neither Ronaldo or Messi could win on the board.

75-year-old Pandolfini is known as a chess author and one of US' most experienced chess teacher. He was also the first coach of Fabiano Caruana, and still coaches regularly.

The choice of a game that ended in a draw, suggests that it's impossible to declare who the greatest player ever is.

The never-ending debate on "The Greatest Ever" is also very much present in the chess world. In a popular video series on chess24, Nielsen along with Jan Gustafsson and Laurent Fressinet ranked Garry Kasparov ahead of Carlsen and Bobby Fischer.

Carlsen himself tends to get the question regularly, most recently on an appearance on Lex Fridman's podcast this year.

"I can make a case for myself.", Carlsen starts. After a long analysis of Kasparov and Fischer's reign, he says:

"As for me, I'm of course unbeaten as a world champion in five tries. I've been world number one for 11 years straight in an even more competitive era than Garry. I have the highest chess rating of all time, I have the longest streak ever without losing a game. I think for me the main argument would be about the era where the engines have leveled the playing field so much that it's harder to dominate, and still, I haven't always been a clear number one, but I've always, I've been number one for 11 years and for a lot of the time the gap has been pretty big. So I think there are decent arguments for all of them. I've said before and I haven't changed my mind that Garry generally edges it because of the longevity and in the competitive era, but there are arguments."