PES Chronicles

This year, PES has a soundtrack, with actual songs and everything.

One of those songs in particular has captured people’s imaginations like no other, and inspires the title of this post.

Anybody who already has the game will have heard and enjoyed the song in question. For those who have yet to hear the greatest song of all about the greatest game of all, there’s always YouTube:

The greatness of the Football (Soccer!) song is undisputed. However, for the sheer bravura of its complex melodic structure, I’d say the Futebol song runs it a close second. This song needs to be listened to for at least 32 seconds before its full complexity becomes apparent:

Wonderful stuff.

Finally, finally. Pardon the exclamation mark up there. I was just so excited. Here is Donadel’s first goal for Coventry City:

I had to wait almost a full season for it, but it was worth it.

Apart from this high point and the ongoing Cup run, my league form is still poor. I’ve hit the doldrums again in the run-up to the mid-season negotiations. A string of draws and one defeat. If this keeps up I might find myself dragged down into the relegation dogfight. Now that would be a first.

I’m actually feeling pretty fed-up with PES2008 right now.

For one thing, I’m suddenly seeing way more slowdown.

In the match at Galatasaray earlier this season, the action slowed to a crawl every time the ball was at either end of the pitch. The same thing happened against Blackburn Rovers at their ground.

For another thing, the CPU teams this year are majorly annoying. They’ve been annoying for a couple of years, but this year the annoying is turned up to 11.

PES2008, more than any other PES before it, uses its foreknowledge of what button(s) you have just pressed to give the CPU team an advantage. In PES5 and PES6, it used the knowledge to avoid your sliding tackles on the wings but rarely anywhere else. Now, it uses that knowledge all over the park, and can sidestep or hurdle any and every sliding tackle with ease. And it will do this multiple times within seconds. For example:

Yes, that’s absolutely awful defending from me, isn’t it? But it looks worse than it is. The camera angle doesn’t help – at least one of those four attempted tackles should have stopped the other player. The above clip is an example of what the CPU players do a lot more in PES2008 than they ever did before — they turn into untouchable supermen. After the CPU player evaded the first two I kind of knew what was coming.

Am I feeling disillusioned by PES, or by PES2008 in particular? Is the hurricane of fan dismay and negative press affecting my judgement? Possibly.

A couple of good games and a nice goal or two always improve the mood. I’m still hovering above the relegation battlezone, but hopefully starting to pull away.

After his inexplicable wander away from the ball at the worst possible moment in the Chelsea game, I dropped Kim U Don’t and put Friedel back in the First XI.

I had another ridiculous game against Newcastle that ended 3-3, with Alan Smith playing like some kind of 1970s-style Brazilian superman throughout. Beware of Newcastle and Michael Owen in PES2008, is all I’ll say. They are licensed, after all…

Next I played Man Utd at home, and they won 2-1. But I was very happy to score a goal that briefly made the score 1-1 in the second half:

Nice set-up pass from Schwarz, and a super strike from Reyes. These kinds of goals, so plentiful in PES6 (a bit too plentiful, really), are hard to come by in PES2008. I like me some first-time shots, I do…

So I won a couple of games, I lost a couple of games, I drew a couple of games. All very ‘first season in the top flight’, really. With no chance of doing anything in the league this season, the Cup is my only way into Europe (and all of those lucrative fixtures).

I took on Copenhagen at home in the second round (had a bye in the first) and won 1-0. Then I drew 1-1 with them at their place. That was one tough game. They were all over me, and scored at the worst possible time: the very start. I’m talking literally 10 seconds into the game. Ouch.

I resisted the inevitable CPU onslaught (you know how it goes by now), and got my goal towards the end of the half.

Folan, starting for the first time in a while, received the ball in the centre-forward position. I noticed Schwarz in a bit of space for once and clipped a neat through-ball over the back line into his path. The defenders were almost upon him when he received the ball. It had to be a first-time shot… and in it flew, past the keeper’s dive, low into the opposite corner of the net. A fine goal, and most importantly an away goal. Not even I could mess up this one, and I didn’t.