Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

French GM

“Almost every one of us were having dumb moments — sometimes not at the same time, sometimes at the same time. So, we had a lot of bad matches, especially in the Rapid, but in the Blitz as well.

Of course, we wanted to get a title. We didn’t even get close to it. So, it’s a team failure, for sure. But at least we had good spirit.

We weren’t playing our A game. And that’s all there is to say, really. But of course, this match with Uzbekistan could have gone another way. We lost by the narrowest of margin. We could have made it to a tiebreak with a little bit of more luck.”