The Green Shoots of Recovery
I’m off the bottom of Division 2. Better late than never.
Every year, there’s a palpable turning point. The single game when you finally get it, when you stop automatically using your old PES tricks, and start to adapt fully to the new game. PES2008 has come alive for me at last.
Playing Master League with the pish-poor Default players has delayed my adaptation. Perhaps I should have played International Cups for longer, or just played any old games with better teams and players.
What it was, for me, was recognising that my automatic reliance on the R1+X+Square method of continuously pressing the opposition was damaging my play. I was knackering my players and dragging my defenders out of position willy-nilly. No wonder the opposition could virtually walk the ball into my net at times. No wonder my team had nothing left in the tank after a while.
It’s always been faintly noobish to auto-clamp your hand around those buttons in order to sprint and tackle and press with a second player. It’s only rarely been all that effective, thinking back. It was just the thing to do when you play PES. (Most online players do it all the time.) It’s almost an autonomic reflex upon losing the ball.
It really doesn’t work in PES2008 – not enough to make it worthwhile, anyway. I decided to take my fingers off the gas last night. I would only press R1 when I had the ball and wanted to sprint with it, or when I wanted to bring one particular defender into one particular area. The old practice of holding it almost all the time had to go.
Results were immediate. My team kept its shape and its energy much better for longer periods of games. I picked up a 1-0 win. A 2-1 win. A couple of 0-0 draws. I won the second round cup game 2-0 against Derby County. Mao Molina scored a nice snapshot from the edge of the box. Suzuki headed the other goal. It was a great result. Derby were relegated last season and are up there at the top this season, duking it out with the Division’s big boys.
My own possession stats are now the reverse of what they were before – 60/40 in my favour on average – and I’m creating more chances with my fresh and well-positioned players. Consequently, I’m scoring goals now.
Schwarz is getting seriously good, and he’s still only 18. Here’s a goal he scored today. Vintage Schwarz, holding off the defender and then powering a low shot into the far corner:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCpYpOrmQY8&rel=1]
Squeezing R1 whilst trying to win back the ball is actually counter-productive most of the time. R1 locks your players into their sprint modes, making any simultaneous use of X or Square seem much less effective. It’s weird, but simply standing off the opposition, biding your time, letting them have harmless possession (rank PES heresy!), and then pressing X (without R1) when you have a player near enough to challenge, works 100 times better than the customary sprint-press method.
The sprint-press technique is still there, of course. It’s still available for you to use when you want to crowd and pressurise an opposition player in and around your penalty box. It’s just not wise to use it all the time.
Outstanding. Congratulations on the P(ES)aradigm shift.
I found your blog through PESFan.com, and am now an avid reader. I’m in the States (born & bred), but have still ordered PES 2008 through shop.com, and am looking forward to playing in a week or so, despite the poor reviews and online hate.
I’m also on learning from your mistakes, my friend.
And as a side-note, when the US first had a show that covered the Premier League back in the late 90s, I picked Coventry City as my side. Gordon Strachan was the entirely unitelligable manager, and while I never understood a word he said, I decided I liked the Sky Blues.
Years later, I worked with some Englishmen who laughed condescendingly when I told them I liked Coventry City, and that sealed it. Fuckers.
Clearly, I don’t get to watch much of the League, but someday, either Coventry will get back to the top flight, or intercontinental telecommunications will get so dense that I’ll be able to watch anything televised anywhere in the world.
I’m not sure which will come first, actually.
Thanks for your comments. I’ve always played PES intensely – at least a couple of games almost every day, barring illness or other circumstances – and I’ve often thought it’d be useful to put that time to use in other areas, hence the blog. My ML (non-)progress so far is a bit of an embarrassment but it makes it more interesting, I think. It’s not unprecendented either: PES5 gave me *loads* of trouble at first. I have to say though that playing the CPU teams with the starting crop of players (and even with the first batch of better players that you end up getting) was never as tough as it is in PES2008. Be very afraid…
I’m afraid Coventry City and condescension go hand-in-hand unfortunately. If there was a list of most DESPISED teams, CCFC wouldn’t even be on it. They’re not so much hated as completely ignored and not seen as a proper team at all. It’s worse than actually being hated. I doubt we’ll see them back in the top flight in our lifetimes.
I live in Kansas, in the same town with the University of Kansas — it’s where I grew up, and went to school. I am therefore a Jayhawk, born and bred. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_Jayhawks)
During the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s, we have been a basketball school. Nearly always a top 10 program, occasionally the best in the country.
During that time, as good as we were at basketball, we were awful at (American) football. Generally, we were whipping boys for whichever of the conference teams were going to go on to challenge for a national championship, and could always find a way to lose even to other sub-par squads.
This year, however, we’re currently 9-0 and ranked 5th in the nation. You have to go back to 1902 to find the last time a Kansas football team went 8-0, and I don’t know if we’ve ever gone 9-0 before. We’ve certainly never (in my lifetime at least) been mentioned in the same breath as “National Championship game,” but at the moment, it’s one of the possible outcomes.
This goes to show that if Kansas can be a top-10 football school, and Ruskin can belt in two screamers from distance, then by God, Coventry City can get on the teat of the Big Television Money and play in the Premiership!
I belieeeeeve!
I’m prepared to get my electronic ass handed to me in the PES 2008 ML. It makes the ass-handing all the sweeter later.
I believe too, although it’s tough to believe at the moment (as you’ll see in the next few days).
I remember from years past when I’ve finally got out of the lower division, and then finally been able to hold my own in the higher division, how odd it felt to look back and recall all the days (weeks, this year) of struggle at the start.
And how sweet it is to look back from that vantage point!
And thanks for the reminder about Ruskin’s wonder goals. I just rewatched those replays (in the game, in full quality) and it reminded me how *worth it* PES eventually makes any amount of struggle.
It’s a tough road this year for me, but others claim to be finding it easier. I still say those people are playing with nothing but Brazil, Barcelona, AC Milan, etc. I have yet to find anyone on PESfan or elsewhere saying that ML on Top Player with Default players is anything other than a real slog.