Boom bang-a-bang
Posted by: Greg Downs in Barcelona, Beerens, Chelsea, D1 Cup, Drenthe, European Cup (ECC), Guimaraes, Real Madrid, Shimizu, Treble, formations, goal replay, league table, strategy buttons, tags: D1 Cup, ECC, European Cup, formations, goal replay, league table, Shimizu, TrebleAhhh, Europe. Continent of style, culture - and regular, world-engulfing, armed conflicts (we’re long overdue the next one). Europe is also home to a couple of other remarkable things: the greatest club football teams on Earth, and the Eurovision Song Contest.
Struggling against Chelsea and Real Madrid in my quest for the PES2008 Treble, I found myself calling to mind one of Eurovision’s most memorable tunes.The nature of the battle just seemed so evocative somehow.
In the League, there is no struggle: it’s a question of when, not if I win it. The two Cups are more delicately poised, as only Cup competitions can be.
———-
After drawing 2-2 away against Chelsea in the first leg of the D1 Cup semi-final, I was happy enough. Two away goals are nothing to be sniffed at. I went into the return leg completely confident of victory. This is a dangerous mindset to be in. Sometimes, even PES2008 will creep up and mug you when you go into a match thinking you only have to turn up to win it. I’ve come a cropper once or twice.
But I approached the second leg in the right frame of mind: fully concentrated and with a grim purpose. Now that I’ve decided to restart Master League once this season is over, I’m even more focused on winning the Treble.
I beat Chelsea 3-0 at my ground, winning the semi final 5-2 on aggregate.
It was not as straightforward as it sounds. I had to wait a long time for my first goal. Chelsea probed and harried. I had little time on the ball, and created no clear-cut chances. Chelsea missed a couple of good opportunities. As half-time approached I felt myself getting tense. While it was 0-0 there was always the chance they’d sneak a goal. I wanted a goal for myself to give me some insurance.
Then I got it. Traore collected the ball in the centre of midfield. I went off on a run, evaded a couple of defenders, then let one rip. It struck the far post and bounced across the goal, dropping inside the net on the other side:
I exhaled with relief. Now I was certain of the win. I killed off the match with two more quick goals.
So I am through to the Division 1 Cup Final. There I will play… Aston Villa. How very exciting.
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In the second leg of the European Cup semi final I was a lot less confident of progress. In the first leg I’d allowed Real Madrid to score two away goals at my ground. I did get two goals of my own to make it 2-2, but it still meant I had to score at Real Madrid’s place or crash out of the tournament, and thus fail at the Treble, and thus be unhappy.
Real Madrid impressed me a lot in the first leg. They played probably the best that any CPU team has played against me in PES2008.
They started just as impressively in the second leg. Their left back, Drenthe, is not only big and strong (more like a CB than a SB), he is also very quick and very deadly with crosses. He raced down my wing after about ten minutes and hoisted a ball into the box. There was Raul to nod home, making it 1-0 to Madrid on the night.
Oh, crap.
Still, I’d known that I’d have to score at least once in this game to win it. Now I had to score at least twice. Pesky away goals. Who invented them?
As the half wore on it looked as if it wasn’t going to be my night. I just had that feeling. The feeling you get from a PES match when everything is an ordeal. Simple passes that go astray; shots that scream miles over the bar, or straight down the keeper’s throat; tackles that miss completely or leave the opposition player flat on the ground as the referee reaches for his pocket.
I made it to half time with the score still at 1-0. Football is a game of two halves…
I got a goal soon after the break. I broke up yet another raid by Drenthe down my right side. (Note to self: must check out Drenthe at some point in Master League 2.0) He was out of position, and I lofted a delicious aerial through-ball over the top to Shimizu. The little fella’s jet-heeled boots left the Madrid defence trailing a long way behind. I was one-on-one with Casillas. Could I do it?
Yep, I could do it. Shimizu dinked the ball past the keeper. 1-1 on the night. 3-3 on aggregate. Madrid still had that one extra away goal. I needed another goal.
It didn’t look as if it was going to come. By the 80th minute, that awful feeling I mentioned earlier was a full-on conviction that this was it, the Treble was over, it was not meant to be, et cetera.
Duffy had come on for the exhausted Guimaraes, who had been chasing Drenthe up and down the pitch all night. I got the ball with Duffy near the halfway line, and went off on a little run toward Madrid’s net….
Goal! The magnificent Beerens strikes again. That’s about 20 goals for him in all competitions this season so far. At the point where Duffy breaks into the Madrid penalty area, I was a hair’s-breadth away from pressing Shoot, but thought better of it and passed to Beerens. I’m glad I did.
1-2 to me, and that’s how it ended. Real Madrid pressed ineffectually in the last few minutes. I wasn’t taking any chances. It was time to park a bus in in my penalty area. I pressed L2+Triangle to switch to my ultra-defensive 5-4-1, and kept it like that. The final whistle went. I was through.
I’ll play Barcelona in the final. Should be easy…
———–
In the League I’ve continued to win matches with scorelines like 6-3, 4-0, 3-1, 5-2, etc. I’m seven points clear with four games to play.
Another win or two will secure the title. A final goal difference of +100 - or more - should be achievable too.
I’m about to play two Cup Finals. Two wins in those games, and the Treble is mine.
This time tomorrow, one way or the other, it’ll all be over.
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some1’s ML story had a salary limit- thats a good way of keeping your team bad, like 10,000 in D2 an 12,000 in D1.
also limiting yourself to 4 non english players each game is good too
u can have lots of fun with house rules
Yes, I second bostongoals suggestions. Also, you can put a limit to the development curve of your players. For example, don’t sign anyone who peaks over 90 (or 80, if you’re brave). Or you can limit your whole team by age. Don’t sign anyone over 23, for example. Or just sign players from a certain nationality, like I do.
Good luck with the treble! It’s about time somebody took Coventry City to the pinnacle of footballing glory!
Which reminds me of the old joke: “What does the Newcastle fan do when his team wins the Premiership?”
“Puts down the controller and turns off the PS2.”
bostongoals - It won;t be long now before I restart Master League with House Rules, and I’m toying with the idea of making them super-tough from the start instead of introducing new ones every time I start finding the game easy again. I might go with just having one nationality in the whole squad, or just one nationality+a maximum of 4 non-nationality players on the pitch (like the old rules in the Premiership). <<<That’s a little garbled but I’m sure you know what I mean. (I’m typing at work, with a boss nearby.)
Mirandinha - a development curve cap! Hmmm… I could turn off player development altogther, of course, but that’d ruin a lot of the fun of Master League. There’s nothing like getting a 17 year old player and watching him grow in your team to his full potential. I don’t think I could give that up - it’s too far. I’d do anything to extend PES2008’s longevity, but I won’t do that, as Meat Loaf once nearly sang.
ck - remember 1987? I do - we’ll never see its like again, I fear.
Well, not so much.
In America in 1987, you literally couldn’t get any information on English football unless you got English papers, which as far as I knew in Kansas didn’t exist.
I had the Cosmos occasionally on Saturday sports shows during the 70s, a tiny bit of World Cup coverage (even though the US wasn’t in any) and this vague idea that in Europe, people really *really* liked my favorite sport.
My how times change. Personally, I thank Arthur C. Clarke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_satellite#Geostationary_orbits
Arthur C. Clarke, huh? Another Science Fiction fan? Gooooood.
Greg, maybe you can put a limit to the number of players in your squad. That way you’ll always have to balance because of more problems with stamina. Or you can just force yourself to only sign players who would realistically play for a team of the level your team’s at at the moment.
MIrandinha - I already plan to have a squad upper limit of 26 players. (As soon as I get to the first pre-season negotiations I’ll let the out of contract players leave, and not replace them.)
and to both you and ck - The Nine Billion Names of God. I read it at about the age of 12 and it has haunted me ever since. I reread it again a few years ago and it’s lost its power a tad. I look to Peter F. Hamilton, Robert Reed, Dan Simmons, and others of that ilk for my sci-fi kicks nowadays. Space opera you can stand a spoon up in - can’t be beat!
I’ve started to have a real think about what is killing PES2008. After going back and playing a couple of games i have come to the conclusion that the general gameplay is no easier than it’s predecessors. Where the ease and thus the frustration from us long time fans comes in is in the goal scoring department.
My guess is that generally your shot count would be no higher this time around than it was previously, however now that you know how easy it is to score goals you probably fire off a few more shots from obscure angles/distances because you know they are a high chance of going in where as previously it wasn’t likely to happen.
So this leaves us with the poor goalkeeping being at the heart of all of PES2008’s problems. If you play a game of FIFA you see the keeper make some very good saves which is what you expect from the game, in PES though how many spectacular saves do you see keepers make?
stinger - The keepers are indeed the main reason. Konami also made the human players’ pace *mean* something in PES2008 - which leads to lots of mazy runs on goal. I spent seven years hardly ever dribbling in PES. Now I dribble all the time. Did you see that Guimaraes goal a few days ago? I never, ever, *ever* scored goals like that in any previous version. Now I score plenty of them. I find myself deliberately restraining myself from going off on mazy runs.
Then, once you get through on goal, chances are the keeper will fumble/parry/palm the ball, and you’ll get the rebound or another of your players will.
If goalkeepers really are the problem, edit all keepers to have 100 in important stats? You’d hope then they wouldn’t ever drop them or sell them for lesser players.
But nationality (if you pick the right ones!) can make a huge difference. Like I said previously I did an england once and it was hard in the early years.
Either way I’ll be very interested to see what rules you employ.
what are the important gk stats?
i go for balance, response, jump, gk skills, stars and height. But does ‘defense’ count for anything? I also like a bit of acceleration which is hard to come by with keepers.
Paul, David - I remember reading on PESfan recently where someone had tried bumping up the keepers’ stats to 99 in everything. They still fumbled the ball just as much, according to that poster.
Truth be told, I’m not so keen on PES2008 as to want to spend hours amending players’ stats to make up for the game’s shortcomings. I think there’s mileage in the game to be had, but it’ll have to come from House Rules.
What do you mean you never dribble? Football’s all about the dribbling. Ok, now’s the Brazilian in me talking, but I can’t really see myself playing PES and NOT dribbling around as many defenders as I can. I love to have a strong pacy striker who can dribble around the last defender and run towards goal, and, if I’m so inclined, dribble past the keeper too. The only thing more satisfying is to score from volleys.:-)
Mirandinha - honestly, until PES2008 I never went on runs with players. The most I did was sprint past one or two defenders. I don;t count that as dribbling. Dribbling to me is the kind of thing Guimaraes was doing for that goal. I was a pass and move player for 7 whole years on ISS/PES until next-gen PEs2008 came along.