Radjabov: chess is not a team kind of sport

This interview is from FIDE GP website.

In my opinion chess in general is not a team kind of sport. There are cases when a number of stars, the strongest chess players, are gathered in one team, and there is no unity. It occurs because there is a competition between the players at a high level. In particular, the Russian national team is used to face such problems, on multiple occasions. A long-term member of this team, Alexander Morozevich said in an interview that he had not felt a real team spirit already for twelve years. But basically the team spirit was present in our team, until a certain moment, when our trainers did not make the right decisions. We have no individualists in our national team. For example, when we participated in the Team Championship in Crete, there was a healthy atmosphere in the team, and all our players showed good results.

I guess the individuality of this sports failed once again to convinced top class players that chess could be a good team sports as well. With good reasons. No wonder why unheralded and low seeded teams (Dresden Olympiad and European Championship, are some of the good examples) surprises everyone with their not so impressive performance but come up with good results. The Philippine team at Dresden also has to deal with similar problems, right? To many of you who are regularly updated about our team in Dresden, remember the Torre/Gonzales - Laylo, Gomez and So incident? That could also ad to the strings of "reasons" regarding the poor showing of our team in the Olympiad. Yes, yes there was these money and organization "problems" but their just part of it. I say open your eyes folks and let us not single out the bad atmosphere that surrounds the team members themselves.

How about seeing ten players on one chess board like a game of Basketball? Stupid questions.