PES Chronicles

The first game after the mid-season negotiations always makes for a refreshing change.

You’ve staggered toward the mid-season, and in some cases fallen over the line. Half your team played the last few games with three-quarters-full stamina bars, and the other half sat on the bench recovering from their one-quarter-full stamina bars.

Once the four-week negotiations are up, every player is once again at your disposal, fully fit and raring to go with their gleaming 100% stamina bars. Any new players are also there, just itching to be put through their paces. Yes, the first game after a negotiation period is always a bit special.

Sunderland were the opponents. Sunderland were my bogey team in my last ML career. That’s one reason but not the only reason they’re in this ML career. I wanted to sprinkle Division 2 of this Superleague with a few token weaker teams.

My entire First XI was fit and in form. I kicked off, and immediately worked the ball out to Leonardo (pictured left). Straightaway, I could tell that, no, he’s definitely not the famous Leonardo… (Not unless somebody at Konami has made a serious blunder, anyway.)

I took him on a little run up the wing to see if he is a wonder-dribbler or not. He’s not. He still seems pretty handy, though. I kept him on the field for the whole game and he was always a threat.

Sadly, I conceded a goal to Sunderland after about 5 minutes. I had virtually my whole team in Sunderland’s half, looking for an early goal myself, but conceded possession with a sloppy, over-ambitious pass. Sunderland broke. Maldini isn’t fast enough yet to cover the holes that their strikers exploited. They one-twoed their way around him, and I rushed the goalkeeper out but couldn’t stop the goal. 1-0 down. Damn.

I got my equaliser pretty quickly. It must have been only a few minutes later when I passed with Maldini to Matuzalem, who sent an aerial through-ball down the right wing towards Kmolo. As the ball bounced I tried for a flashy first-time half-volley from 25 yards (they look and feel just great when they go in). The Sunderland keeper saved – but, as ever in PES2008, he couldn’t hold onto the ball. Altintop followed up for a simple tap-in. Here’s the whole goal:

I was happy enough with it. The rest of the game panned out pretty much like your average football bore-draw. Both teams occasionally looked like scoring but there was always the last-man tackle, the saving challenge, the acrobatic goalkeeper to claw the shot away…

Sunderland aren’t my bogey team anymore. I haven’t identified my bogey team yet this time around – perhaps I haven’t got one. Perhaps it was only my paranoid PES imagination that made me think Sunderland were ever my bogey team.