PES Chronicles

From now on, when I hear people complain that PES2008 is too easy, I will recommend that they play Master League on Top Player difficulty with the Default players. That should sort them out, and then they will thank me.

I have been on the longest losing streak of my entire PES life. I have lost nine games in a row. No 0-0 draws. No sneaky 1-0 wins. No glorious 1-1 draws where I equalised in the dying minutes to snatch a point. No. I was soundly beaten, and sometimes thrashed, nine times in a row.

A new feature in Master League this year is a kind of moving calendar bar that displays all of your fixtures – past, present, and future – along with their results. A loss is recorded as a big fat X. I have a row of nine Xs immediately to the left of my ‘next game bar’. It’s painful. I lost most of them without even managing to put up much of a fight. 0-1. 0-2. 0-3. These were common scorelines. 0-5, on one occasion. That particularly hurt.

It could be chalked down to having to come to terms with a new game. I have said that PES2008 is deceptively familiar. Its very familiarity may be helping to mask its innovations, if that makes sense. I’m just babbling now. What has happened to me?

Perhaps I lost my edge once I admitted to myself that it was going to be impossible to get promoted this season. That’s part of the reason, I think. But I think the major reason for this unprecedented disaster is that I messed up the mid-season negotiation period. In past PESes I have always – always - managed to snap up a good experienced midfielder or two at the very least. This time around I emerged with three kids: Schwarz, Shimizu, Mattsson. Everyone knows that you can’t win anything with kids.

Just for once, everyone might be right. Shimizu has been okay. Mattsson has actually been good (relatively speaking).

But the 17-year-old Schwarz has been a great disappointment. You shouldn’t expect great things from young players. You shouldn’t even expect good things. But you are entitled to expect something.

Schwarz has done nothing, precisely nothing. He has played in about two-thirds of the games since I got him, and he has done nothing. He has barely had a meaningful touch of the ball. I can vaguely – just vaguely – recall him scuffing a snapshot at goal, early on when I was still hopeful that some of that Schwarz magic – what a star he was in PES5! – might rub off on my team, and turn its fortunes around.

I know, I know. It’s not really Schwarz who’s playing. I do know that really I’m the one who’s playing. I choose the formation. I select the team. I’m the one who actually moves the players, passes the ball, shoots on goal.

Schwarz is the big-boned kind of striker – the sort who’s naturally awkward and ungainly during his youth. It’s only right that he’s more or less anonymous in my team right now. There’d be something seriously wrong with the game if he wasn’t. He needs time to grow and mature into the player he can be. Which is why I’m still playing him.

Five seasons from now, or sooner – mark my words – Schwarz will be putting teams to the sword for fun, hopefully with me pulling his strings. I doubt that I’ll get impatient and sell or trade him. I know enough of his future potential for that simply never to happen.

For now, it’s back to the grindstone. I just want this season over with.