We Are The Champions
Posted by: not-Greg in Camacho, goal replay, tags: Camacho, goal replay“Every failure carries within it the seed of an equivalent or greater success.”
Thus Napoleon Hill, one of the fathers of modern-day personal development/self-help literature, speaking in the 1930s.
What he could have had in mind was my 8-1 defeat—nay, my 8-1 thrashing—by Sparta Rotterdam back at the start of the season, and the outcome that it has led to today.
I have won the league. Coventry City are Division 2 champions. I’ll be playing with the big boys next season. Better late than never. Whew. It feels very sweet, believe me.
If I hadn’t lost that opening game in the way that I did, I might have continued taking PES2008 rather lightly. As it turned out, the thrashing (ouch) focused my mind very effectively. My recovery started from the very next game, which I won with a level of concentration and patience that I don’t think I would have had otherwise.
As the season went on I only grew in confidence. The 8-1 humiliation really did plant the seed that grew the triumph.
I still didn’t have things easy during the last two games. I needed to win them both to be certain of promotion and the title, but I lost the first one 0-1 to AIK Athens (a bit of a bogey team). After the game I noticed that I’d been promoted anyway. I could now only finish in second place as a worse-case scenario.
I still wanted the league, though. I had to win my last game against Levante to be sure.
It started badly, with them scoring early to put me 0-1 down and on the back foot. I hate it when I go behind early in big games. When that happens, what we all fear is that the script is being written right before our eyes and there is little or no actual ‘free will’ involved. After all these years on PES and all these (it must be) thousands of games, I believe that some element of scripting is undeniable. I’m not saying that I was irrevocably meant to go 0-1 down early on in this big championship decider—but I’m sure it was a lot more likely that I would.
I fretted, worried for my team and for MY title. I already regarded it as my title. (Napoleon Hill would have approved…)
Midway through the second half, that phenomenon of PES2008, Camacho, received the ball in his customary wide-right position. Somehow I cut back and inside the defender, in a way that I used to do for fun on PES6 all the time, but which they’ve altered for PES2008 just enough to make it tricky.
A few more strides with Camacho toward the goal, and I unleashed yet another picture-book long-ranger:
(Camacho, I’ve just noticed, wears the number 23 in my squad. It wasn’t deliberate. William Burroughs—and Napoleon Hill?—would approve.)
The 1-1 draw was enough to take the title. Happiness is not a cigar called Hamlet; happiness is winning the Division 2 title in Pro Evolution Soccer after several seasons of taking regular beatings.
Season 2012 approaches. When I set up this Master League, in haste, back on the whatever-it-was-of-March when the PSP game plopped through my letterbox and I was all excited, I threw myself in with the game’s equivalent of La Liga. Next season I’ll be in the thick of it with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia & co. That’s fine with me. I played two careers with the English clubs on the benighted PS3 version and I won’t miss them this time around.
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Congratulations. You’re going to have to make quite a good transfer market though, as you will be playing 2x the games, with tougher competition.
Congratulations on your ML progress AND the new site!
I have swapped in Pro Evo 2008 sadly. It’s garbage as the main reason I bought it was for online play. Absolute garbage.
heyendo30 - thanks, and in answer to your question on the old site, I always thought Malgani and Maradona were two separate players!? I’m not sure though. I might be remembering PES5.
not given - Big shame about trading in the game. I’m the complete opposite of you in that I play PES for offline, Master League play and it really wouldn’t bother me if there was no online play at all. I’m so glad I’ve found the PSP/PS2 version. Are you keeping your PSP version?
If you can, grab the demo of UEFA2008 on the PS3/360. I’ve had the chance to play it a lot more over the last few days. I think it’s superb. If it is at all indicative of what we can expect for FIFA09, Seabass and co. have got their work cut out to create the next-gen PES that we all want and expect.