Camacho, macho man Comments Off
I was going to make today’s post the first of my special ’stats tracking’ posts.
So far on this blog I’ve pretty much ignored PES2008’s inner workings. I’ve hardly mentioned individual players’ stats at all. The main reason for this is time constraints. Working full time and with plenty of other irons in the fire, I’ve sometimes barely had time to put together the usual kinds of “So I played PES and I pressed kick and it went in and it was good” posts.
But I’ve decided to make time from now on, and today was going to see the first of a new kind of post.
It was going to be all about my young midfielder Camacho: his current stats, his ability stars, his present status, his glorious future… But none of the mobile phone pictures that I took of his stats turned out very well (see left) and I only took a few handwritten notes. Then, to cap it all, I got him sent off against Atalanta.
I won’t be able to try again until tomorrow, or maybe even Saturday, so it’s a roll-over for Camacho and for ’stats tracking’.
Atalanta 1-0 Singers FC
Yes, Camacho was sent off. Before being sent off he played really, really well – for an unfinished 19-year-old, he is a real midfield presence in every game he starts. One of the few handwritten notes I took this morning shows me that he has quite a high aggression stat – 83 – relative to his other stats, which are all averaging in the low 70s right now.
What does the Aggression stat mean? What does it control? How does it translate into on-field action? These are the kinds of questions I’ll try to discuss at length in the future.
This defeat was not due to me going down to 10 men. Atalanta got their goal in the first 30 seconds, before I had even touched the ball. (Don’t you just hate it when that happens?)
For the rest of the game I enjoyed lots of possession (65%) and had many good opportunities to score (10 shots on target) but couldn’t get the goal.
Singers FC 1-1 Napoli
This game was almost an exact copy of the Atalanta game. Napoli scored in the first few minutes and I spent the rest of the game launching wave after wave of attacks at their goal.
Every shot I had either screamed wide or was saved. Annoyingly, the saves were mostly ‘clean’ ones: the infamous PES2008 goalkeepers didn’t come to my rescue and politely palm the saves toward the feet of my players.
By the 88th minute I’d almost given up hope when I got the ball with Lagutz out on the left. That area of the pitch was Elcherino’s old stamping ground. The Great One’s spirit seized me…
Yes. It is a disturbingly similar goal to many of Elcherino’s 120,232 goals from last season. Truth be told, I knew it would be an almost certain goal even with a player of Lagutz’s modest abilities.
I’m still harbouring doubts about PES2008. They’re lurking at the back of my mind and refuse to go away.
The amount of points I am dropping here at the start of the season is starting to alarm me. I want promotion this year. With a bit of patience and self-discipline I think I could make a serious challenge, even with my fairly average squad. But it’s looking as if next season is a more realistic possibility.
———-
Other news in brief: I’ve played the demo of Football Manager 2008, albeit not on my own PC. I played it on a PC at work (I have Administrator access to the work PCs, and am always happy to abuse the privilege).
I only had time to play it for 10 minutes or so, but that was enough time to gather a few first impressions.
I set up a career as manager of Coventry City, of course, and played the first half of the first pre-season friendly. Football Manager is a hyper-realistic game, so a 4-3-3, ultra-attacking formation was not desirable… I went for a 4-4-2 with a diamond pattern in midfield. I didn’t spend any time tinkering with tactics, runs, defensive roles, etc. Falkirk, my opponents, scored three goals in the first ten minutes. Hmmm.
I had to stop playing, but I saw enough to know that Football Manager could get me again.
This blog is obviously heading towards being a general football video game blog in any case (PES2008 just can’t sustain it on its own, sad to say). In a month or two, FM2008 should be one of those games.
I’ve also been playing yet another football computer game over the past few days, one that I’ve only previously mentioned once or twice, in passing. The game was Sensible Soccer. I played on a friend’s Xbox360. I’d really never played it before in my entire life. I’ll talk about that one in a special post in a day or two.