Goalkeepers Are Indifferent
Posted by: Greg Downs in Kim U Don, Liverpool, Schwarz, Shimizu, Sunderland, bogey team, league table, tags: bogey team, Kim U Don, league table, Schwarz, ShimizuAfter starting season 2011 very well I was almost scared to start playing again. My usual schtick in PES2008 is to take one step forward and three steps back. Followed by another step or two back, before taking a step forward again. Followed by… you get the idea.
The next match was a pretty dour struggle against Portsmouth. 0-0 it ended, without much incident. The ball seemed to be stuck in the midfield for most of the game. I’d win possession (I’m good at winning possession now), then try to move forward but find that none of my usual moves were getting through. Was this the start of another of my fabled PES2008 Master League backstepping manoeuvres?
No. It wasn’t. I was up against Liverpool in the next game. They never seem to do well against me nowadays. In last season’s Cup Final I thoroughly battered them.
I bossed the game, taking an early lead - and then predictably lost a goal to some suspicious nonsense. 1-1, and I had a certain sinking feeling..
In the middle of the second half I was pressing hard for another goal. Then I got it. Shimizu in his new right-sided CF role has been fantastic for me this season. (He was rubbish when I played him there in seasons 2007 and 2008, but he was only about 6 years old at the time.) This was a classic PES finish:
There’s nothing like rifling one in from an angle across the keeper. These kinds of goals are true bread and butter strikes.
I bagged another goal before the end and ran out a 3-1 winner. It wasn’t very tough.
Sunderland were next. Sunderland: the team that has handed out so many painful beatings to me over the seasons that I’ve lost count of just how much I owe them.
I have a suspicion that the game automatically earmarks certain other club(s) at the start of a Master League as being your bogey team(s). Every game I play against either Galatasaray or Sunderland (my two bogey teams) seems characterised by intensity. That’s the only way I can describe it. The tackles are unflinching; the pace, electric.
This was another relatively dull game in the Portsmouth pattern. The fireworks of the Liverpool game were largely absent. I got a goal with Schwarz early in the second half. Immediately afterward, the Sunderland players turned on their customary Brazilian skills (!) and tried to dance past my defence, but I held firm. I was lucky on one or two occasions. The final whistle blew. Happy? Yes. Yes, I was happy.
Next up was Zagreb away. Things did not get off to a good start. Watch my goalkeeper, Friedel, in this clip:
Thanks for that, Brad. You and Kim U Don’t aren’t sharing a room on away trips ever again.
Okay, so my passing between defenders that gave the ball away was poor - but I had seen out of the corner of my eye this strange black-clad figure running up the pitch, and it distracted me. I wonder how far Friedel would have kept going if I hadn’t lost possession?
If I was now going to give Brad Friedel a permanent nickname along the lines of Kim U Don’t, there’s an obvious one: Bad Friedel. But I went on to win the game 4-1, so I’ll forgive him.
These results - three wins and a draw, with goals aplenty - have pushed me up to third in the table after nine games. Nosebleed territory.
If this is indicative of the season to come, I should be in with a chance at Europe.
I’m still not convinced, though. I still fully expect to find myself dragged back down into the relegation quagmire sooner or later.
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I had that same keeper-running-up-the-pitch experience, but it was the opposition’s. I tried to win the ball back to slot it in from distance, but they fouled me intentionally. Bummer. It was pretty hilarious though. Apart from a couple rare occasions with Ivarov, I haven’t had much cause for complaint about the keepers. Of course, this is last-gen I’m playing, but there you go. I have nothing bad to say about my current keeper, Friedriksson. Just amazing. And he’s a free-kick expert too, in line with the likes of the legendary Rogério Ceni.
I just player my first two matches in the Champions League, and I clutched a couple of away wins against Lyon and Inter Milan. I was thrilled. Bradley scored a real cracker against Inter, in a very hard-fought game. As I said before, keep him in the starting XI, and it will pay off in no time. He has 92 for both body balance and defence right now, and he’s not even in his peak yet.
Great news on your new seasons start, hopefully relegation is a thing of the past for you.
As for the Friedel thing, I had it happen to me a couple of times. One of which was my fault for double tapping and initiating 1-2 pass. Don’t know about the other though. :s
Mirandinha, you would weep to see the next-gen keepers sometimes. I saw someone playing the PS2 version in a shop the other day and it really is (shockingly) just PES6 with a new logo - but at least the keepers are as reliable as they can be in a PES.
In PES2008 not only do they palm or punch or even chest the ball into the net from almost any kind of shot (randomly), but they do the kinds of things you’ve seen Kim U Don’t and Friedel doing.
I’ve got no complaints about Lekstrom so far - it can’t be a coincidence that a solid late-20s keeper coming into my side has seen my results dramatically improve. He still does the palm/punch/chest thing a lot, but by PES2008 standards he’s otherwise a very good keeper.
Paul - I swear the only button I pressed before Friedel went walkabout was X, to pass it out to the defender. I could have pressed L1 as well by mistake, I’ll admit. Let’s give the game the benefit of the doubt (it needs it!) and say that’s what happened…
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over.
Bad Friedel! That is madness. Why would that script even be in the game, nonetheless trigger on its own?
I agree about the bogey teams. They do select them. I wish, however, that the game would, you know, tell you somehow that this is your big rivalry coming up rather than just doing all this business in the background without bothering to inform you.
I liked how in FIFA 07 your derby matches would be called out. These are the sorts of things that PES should have included, along with generic stadiums, the ability to edit stadium features and names for each team independantly (the way we can do with uniforms), the ability to create up to 3 derby/rivalries for each team (Boca vs. River, Old Firm, ManYew vs. LeeverPeel, etc.) . . . the list goes on.
I’ve heard of this keeper bug in old PESes, apparently it’s still in PES2008 on the PS2, and if some of the goalkeeping horror stories I read on PESfan are to be believed then I’m getting off lightly. Someone there claims to have had their keeper *literally disappear* on them during a game. Disappear as in vanish from the pitch. Not invisible - just gone.
FIFA07 did a lot right, and I’m still playing it on my PSP. FIFA8 is something I’ll have to spend more quality time with very soon. I had five games the other night on the second-lowest difficulty and scored precisely one goal. It’s a tough, tough game. The games reviewers who marked it down because of its difficulty missed the point. They missed the fact that EA have tried to set out in a whole new direction with their game this year, and I for one approve. So do a ton of other PES gamers, and it still feels odd saying it.