PES Chronicles

Apart from that awful 1-8 defeat in the opening league game at the hands of Sparta Rotterdam, which I’m still shuddering about now, I’m actually doing quite well at the start of season 2011.

It’s my 5th season in Division 2 on last-gen PES2008 after several months spent playing the next-gen offering. The adjustment phase has taken a little longer than I thought it would.

My game is starting to come together—finally, after however many seasons it’s been. I’m defending well and conceding fewer goals. The Sparta game really was an anomaly—it was a wake-up call, if anything. I’m also scoring a few goals and getting results. But I’m not getting carried away. I’ve had false dawns before on this game. At the start of last season I thought I had things all worked out, and look what that got me: a miserable finish, my squad cut in half for financial reasons, and an eight-goal thrashing to boot.

I’ve won a couple more games and drawn another. I’m unbeaten in the league since that terrible opening fixture.

And now along comes the Division 2 Cup. I was drawn against Almeria.

I was very, very motivated for the Cup. A great cup run would do so much for my stuttering Master League career. Not just in financial terms—although that would be very welcome indeed; I really need to replenish my squad in the mid-season negotations—but also to get my team popularity rank up, so I can attract better players to my club.

The first leg against Almeria was at my place. I played well, using all the patience and skill I’ve learned over the past few games. I went 2-0 up and things stayed that way until the last minute.

When the CPU is behind in PES2008 on PSP/PS2, I’ve noticed that the merest brush against one of its players results in a free kick. Finally I have seen for myself just what people have been complaning about for the past five months. Next-gen PES2008 has its faults (boy does it have them), but I never felt that the CPU won cheap free kicks. Yes, it scored free kicks cheaply, but at least they were all awarded in the first place in a realistic, non-dodgy way.

An Almeria player lost the ball and one of my players ran off with it. The whistle blew for a CPU free kick. Of course it did. The free kick was about 30 yards out. What was going to happen next? Anyone?

The resulting free kick was the most perfectly-struck, perfectly-placed free kick in the history of football, real or virtual. It arrowed straight and true toward the top corner. At least my keeper, Lehmann, got a hand to it. But the rebound squirmed off to one side at a preposterous angle and speed—directly into the path of a following-up CPU player. 2-1, and the final whistle went. I was pretty disgusted. If the game had finished 2-0 to me at home, then the second leg would have been a formality. But we couldn’t have that, could we? So a nice little CPU away goal had to happen.

In the second leg, the CPU got its goal early and the game stayed that way despite me attacking almost constantly. Every shot flew wide, hit the post or crossbar, or was acrobatically saved.

1-0 to Almeria, 2-2 on aggregate. Almeria went through on away goals.

So it was bye-bye to the cup. I was almost literally open-mouthed at how blatant the scripting was over the two games. Seabass doesn’t even do us the courtesy of trying to conceal it any more.

Oh well. Now I can concentrate on the league.