Newcastle 1, Singers 4 Comments Off
It was my first game after the mid-season negotiations in my new Master League career.
I’ve had a pretty torrid time of it (again) with the Default players. In the transfer window I bought a clutch of pretty good players, among them one Elcherino, a star striker.
After the game kicked off I won the ball from Newcastle and fed it forward to Elcherino on the left. It was his very first touch in the very first minute of his very first game for me. Well. It’s probably better if I just show you:
If you can’t look at the clip, what happened was that I went down the wing with Elcherino, spun around, cut back inside, and sent an unstoppable rocket of a shot high into the top corner of the Newcastle net. The replay doesn’t do justice to the sheer bullet-like unstoppability of the shot. It was a true net-buster.
I was pleased. It worked off a lot of frustration after my terrible first part of the season. Elcherino, I thought, you little beauty…
The game went on. All except one of my other new signings were on the field (Postma was unfit).
For a 17-year-old rookie, Jackson acquitted himself admirably in the centre of defence, heading everything away and tackling efficiently. Camacho was slow but adequate out on the right wing. He picked up a booking but passed the ball well. My other two strikers, Altintop and Caracciolo, were strong but unspectacular.
Elcherino, though… Different class.
Before the first half was over he’d got another one. Again I basically just gave him the ball, dribbled until I had a shooting chance, and scored.
After that I started trying to do it all the time. My whole game was a) get the ball, b) give the ball to Elcherino, and c) try to dribble through the entire CPU team to score.
If you have ever played PES2008 (next-gen) online, you will know that roughly 95% of all online players choose to play with either Brazil, Barcelona, or Inter Milan. Their entire gameplan consists of feeding the ball to the likes of Adriano, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo & co., and then simply running with the ball. I am usually pretty good at defending against this ‘tactic’. Taking a minute before the match to set up an alt 5-4-1 formation and map it to a strategy button usually stops them, and makes them whine afterwards. But that’s not the point. It’s cheap and it’s ‘gamey’. It’s just one of the reasons why I am less than enthralled with PES2008 online.
But here I was, in my humble Master League, doing exactly the same thing with Elcherino.
Half time came and went. I kicked off in the second half. Caracciolo tapped the ball to Elcherino, and I raced him upfield to score. No effort involved. Hmmm.
3-0 to me, and cruising. Then I got Camacho sent off. I was down to 10 men. Then Newcastle put one into my net. Ouch. Was this the start of a collapse?
No. It wasn’t. From the kickoff, I raced upfield with Elcherino again, and scored again…
4-1 to me, and Elcherino had scored all 4 of my goals. That’s how it ended. I substituted Elcherino after his fourth goal, hoping to keep him fresh for the next game.
I never usually bother to look at the player ratings after a match, but I was curious this time. Elcherino only a 9? What do you have to do in this game to get a 10?
My next highest-rated player was only 6.5. That alone speaks volumes.
The next game, and the ones after it, were very interesting indeed. There may be repercussions for the future of my troubled relationship with PES2008. I might be playing PES5 – and FIFA08 – again sooner than I thought.