Almeria 1-1 Coventry City Comments Off
Every match I play in my new Master League career as Coventry City on the PSP version of PES2008 shows me something new about the game.
During this league game against a very tidy Almeria side, I discovered a couple of things. For example: you can’t sprint in midfield, or at least it’s best not to sprint in midfield. No matter how much space you think you have in front of you, a CPU player will emerge from the side of the screen and nick the ball off the toe of your sprinting player. I don’t know if this is a side-effect of the PSP’s smaller screen. Will I see the same effect on the big screen when I upgrade to the PS2 verison next week?
Part of me hopes so. Even though it mostly nerfs one of my favourite long-standing PES moves: the extended sprint in a straight line through midfield (not all of it; just 10 virtual yards or so) followed by a stupendous, blockbusting, 45-yard piledriver into the top corner of the net. The name Mathieu is not far from my mind here…
It’s still early days for me and this Coventry City team in this Master League, so it could be that all I need are better players and the CPU won’t be able to steal the ball from me as easily as it does at the moment.
I took the lead against Almeria. From one of their corners I cleared the ball and it found its way to Camacho, a player who I can’t get enough of at the moment, standing just inside the centre circle.
Only Podolski and Sergio Garcia were ahead of him. I played a nice floated through-ball with the outside of Camacho’s boot over the defence into Garcia’s stride. He was clean through on goal, albeit at an angle.
After a week playing this ‘last-gen’ PES2008 I knew that I couldn’t afford to take my time with the finish—the CPU defenders were tracking back and would be upon me before I knew what was happening if I left it for even a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
I aimed with the analogue nub (I use the analogue nub!) at the opposite top corner and pecked at the shoot button. I’m still getting used to the last-gen version’s more sensitive shooting. The ball flew into the net, exactly where I wanted it to. It was Garcia’s first goal in my team. I was pretty pleased with it.
Results have been hard to come by. It would have been nice to grind out the win, but I couldn’t hold on. Around the 80th minute an Almeria striker jinked through my central defenders (Maldini and Couto, both 17-year-old Regens) and tucked the ball past my keeper. 1-1 it finished.