After twenty minutes spent editing all the English league team names, I turned my attention to PES United. Every year this is the team I take over and play my Master League career with. I always change their name to that of my home-town club - Coventry City - and edit the kit to the traditional (and world-famous) Sky Blue colour.

I was concerned that PES2008’s trimmed-down Edit mode wouldn’t let me do what I needed to do. But it was fine. Yes, it’s a poor Edit mode this year. I feel a lot of sympathy for fans who love nothing more than to spend hours tinkering with players and kits and boots and logos and whatnot. But the bare-bones Edit mode happens to be adequate for my modest needs.

The only thing I usually do that I couldn’t do this time was add a shirt logo. At the moment I cannot be bothered messing around with EyeCams or whatever it is I need to use to transfer images into the game. I would have liked simply to add some text and use that as a logo, but even that function is denied. Curse you Seabass!

I zipped through the Master League setup screens, impatient to finally get going. I chose Top Player difficulty with 10 minute matches, and I selected the Teamgeist ball to play with. When it came to choosing the transfer market levels, I went with Normal for everything.

And so to the formation screen.

I was interested to see some additions to the Default squad players. As well as the usual and expected Ivarov, Ruskin, Minanda, and Castolo et al, there’s a handful of new faces. Baumann, El Moubarki, Van den Berg, Ettori. They’re all around the 20-years-old mark. I think they’ve been added not just to bulk out a seriously stamina-challenged squad, but to provide you with some youngsters to develop over a few seasons. Ordinarily you can’t get rid of the Default players fast enough (I’m looking at you, Ximelez). If you still have any of them in your squad after a few seasons, you’re not doing things right. But this crop of new players looks promising - especially Van den Berg. I’ll be keeping a fond eye on all of them.

As ever, the main formation has got to be a 4-3-3. And, again as ever, setting up an initial First XI is a matter of choosing the best of a pretty bad bunch. Here’s the formation and selection I started with:

I know. With these players, it’s a formation that cries out: Attack me! But I have found that I cannot play with any other style of formation. Playing with two up front just feels wrong. With a 4-4-2 or a 3-5-2 I can never seem to make things happen. It’s 4-3-3 or bust for me. (I do kind of cheat on this a little by having two alternate formations assigned to strategy buttons, and I use them on the fly in the midst of games. But they’re very special alternate formations, and I use them in a peculiar way.)

I put all the defenders’ and the DMF’s defensive arrows on full. I set up a couple of attacking runs for the AMFs and CFs. (They haven’t worked out too well and I’m chopping and changing them from game to game.)

Then I was ready to play. I had chosen to play in Division 2 of League B, after a few minutes’ confusion over just which League had all the English clubs in its Division 1. After messing around for a while I finally just swapped out the entire Division 1 of League B for all the English clubs. This way, when I get promoted, I’ll be taking part in a virtual English Premiership. That’s the way I like it. However, I did not change any of the clubs in Division 2. Consequently I find myself playing in a real mish-mash of a league. Celtic and Rangers are there. Galatasaray are there. Rosenborg are there. River Plate are there. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Never mind.

I forget now who I played in the first game. Whoever it was, they were all over me. I was cursing the Default players’ treacle-slow movements and response times. I viciously cursed their oil-tanker-like turning circles. I went 0-1 down. Then, somehow, I scored my first goal. Nothing special, really. But the first cut is the sweetest, or something.

The game ended in a 1-1 draw. Overall I was much happier with the Default players than I have been at the start of Master League in the last few PESes. This year they seem more resilient and more capable on the ball, relatively speaking.

I got a shock when it was time to choose my team for the next game. Barely any of the First XI had more than half their stamina left. It’s going to be a long, hard season.

I’m done with my International Cups for now. I got to the final of one last night and lost to a deflected goal in extra time. Perhaps 90% of gamers would just reload their last autosave and play the match again, and again, until they won it. My house rules don’t permit me to do that. I have to go all the way back to the start of a whole new tournament.

Below are the two random goals promised by the post title. I recorded them over the past few days, using my mobile phone. The poor video quality is regrettable but unavoidable. (And you have to take into account the really shockingly poor quality of the PS3 game’s replays to begin with.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kvkOqcp_Pg&rel=1]

Both goals were scored at various times during my ten-or-so stabs at the International Cup since Thursday 25th October.

I won’t be playing any more International Cups for a while. I’ve reached the point now where I think I’m familiar enough with PES2008 to get down to the real business. Master League. It’s finally time. At the time of writing I have already started. I am, of course, playing as Coventry City (i.e. an edited PES United). The real Greg Downs would be so proud.

From tomorrow I will post almost every day - circumstances permitting - about my ML team selections, matches, league positions, transfers, everything. The whole kit and caboodle. PES is deep, deeper than man can comprehend…

I usually play the same career for the entire PES year. For example, during the PES5 year I was unemployed in real life for 6 months, and I managed to get to the game-year 2048 in that time. After finding a job just in time for PES6, I ‘only’ got to 2026. What season will I get to this year? We shall see.

Occasionally I will also post assorted pictures, goals, and miscellaneous video clips from my Master League. Unfortunately I am stuck with a mobile phone camera at the moment. I recorded, converted, and uploaded the goals above as a test. Hopefully a straightforward method will become available to transfer replay save files from the PS3 to the PC, and then create high-quality movie files with them (without having to buy the PC version of the game - my PC simply wouldn’t be able to cope with it).

Let the year-long game begin.

The shooting mechanism in PES2008 is slightly peculiar for a PES game. It seems difficult to get any height on long-range shots. Most will fly toward the net at head-height. Getting them up, up, up in the air - high enough to curl over and down around the goalkeepers’ despairing dives - seems tricky.

Some people recommend double-tapping the shoot button. I.e., first tap the shoot button, then press it again for the desired power. This actually seems to work, although more often than not the resulting shot flies high over the bar. I don’t remember seeing this in the manual, which I’ve read all the way through from cover to cover (does anyone ever actually use the blank Notes pages toward the back of some game manuals for the making of Notes?).

I suspect it really is just all about the power - that and the player’s placement, his footedness, the proximity of opposition players, angle to goal, wind direction, etc. etc….. It should be no more difficult, from what I have seen so far, to blaze the long-rangers in on PES2008 than it was on PES6 or PES5. In fact I think it might turn out to be easier, what with these slightly dodgy keepers and all. It’s just a matter of getting used to the tweaked parameters in the new game. Time will tell on that front.

I’m still playing International Cups - and still not won one. I’m playing on Top Player these days. It isn’t obligatory for me to win a Cup before progressing to Master League, but it would be nice. I came close today. Something clicked, and I flew through the group stage, thumping my first two opponents 3-0 and then, in the case of poor old Wales (the group minnows), 5-0…

The third goal I scored in that match was the best I have scored on PES2008 so far. I had a corner on the right. Instead of pinging the ball into the box and just sort of hoping for the best (as I do with 99% of all corners), I thought I’d try something different. I rotated the view left and saw Gerrard and Lampard standing a few yards outside the box. Gerrard was marked. Lampard wasn’t. I aimed at him and pressed for about a three-quarters-strength cross…

Beckham has a fine delivery. The ball arced through the air. But I had slightly misjudged the power. I’d wanted the ball to fly directly to Lampard, but it bounced about a yard away from him. No matter. I met the ball on the half-volley and walloped it past all the defenders and the goalkeeper into the back of the net. Nice one, Frank.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KapR-B5FpBI&rel=1]

I was eliminated from the tournament in the Quarter Finals by the Czech Republic. Unaccountably, I found myself 0-3 down within 30 minutes of kickoff. The CPU teams in PES2008 often have this knack of being able to magically twist their way through any and every challenge, get possession back instantly whenever they lose it, and walk the ball into the net if that’s what they feel like doing. I’m not bitter. Not much.