Masters blaster
Posted by: not-Greg in European Masters Cup, league table, tags: European Masters Cup, league tableThe WEFA Masters Cup is mostly uncharted territory for me in PES. It’s the game’s equivalent of the UEFA Cup—or the Euro Vase as some wags have unkindly dubbed it. It’s peculiar just how devalued the competition has come to seem. I’m talking about both competitions here: the virtual, computer game one, and its real-life counterpart. I can remember a time when football players, football managers, and most of all football fans would have given everything they had (or at least the proverbial right arm or left testicle) to play in Europe, in any competition. That time is at least a decade behind us now. So what’s changed recently? What’s made the UEFA Cup (and the likes of the FA Cup) suddenly seem comparatively worthless? I don’t have any answers.
The formula for success in Master League usually deposits you in the WEFA Championships and keeps you there, season after season. If you find yourself playing in the Masters Cup it’s because something has gone wrong. You finished the previous season in the top 6 and qualified for the pre-WEFA Championships qualifying tournament—but it’s still too soon for your team and the best you can do is finish 3rd in the group.
That’s what happened to me earlier this season (and I was pretty gutted). But at least there’s a consolation prize in automatic entry to the Masters Cup. I brushed past Rangers in the last round. Now, in the quarter finals, I came up against Benfica.
I thumped Benfica 6-3 on aggregate. The three goals that Benfica scored were jokes: I was lazy, inattentive, sloppy. Conceding them disappointed me, despite winning the quarter final with ease. This keeps happening to me in PES. It’s not just something that started this year. I always let myself go from time to time—just ‘zone out’—and let solid leads slip, and miss out on trophies. It’s a bad habit and I’ve got to get rid of it.
In the league I started winning again, and briefly reclaimed top spot from Valencia. It’s now clear that the race for the Championship is between me and them. I’ve remarked before on how I find Valencia to be my toughest opponent in Division 1. I think it’s because they’re not as big a name as the Big Two (Real Madrid and Barcelona). When I play Real and Barca I play with focus and concentration. I’m lethal in front of goal. Give me a chance, or even a half-chance, and I’ll get the goal I need, and then defend for the rest of the game with patience and discipline.
But against Valencia and other relatively less well-known teams, I tend to play in a more harem-scarem, hell-for-leather style. This exposes me to more danger at the back and seems to blunt my threat up front. Go figure, as they say.
After taking #1 spot from Valencia for a whole week, I drew my next game and found myself in second place again. There are only 5 games to go—one of them against Valencia. That, I think, will be the Championship game. I just have to make sure to win all my other fixtures. And the Masters Cup as well, of course. That’d be so nice…
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I am surprised at Barcelona’s league position! What players did they buy or sell? If they have Rooney, I can’t see how they have not scored enough to win most games!
I don’t know who they’ve sold, but Barcelona have got Carragher, Hargreaves, and Rooney. Also Fernando Torres. Real Madrid have - wait for it - Mark Noble playing regularly.
Valencia has a pretty good side on paper. Villa always gets one of the top spots in the overall goal-scoring ranking in my ML, and Rooney is Barcelona too, while C. Ronaldo is in Real Madrid. They have yet to score against my Konami all-stars, though. I’ve won the treble a number of consecutive seasons already, it’s getting boring. I think I’ll have to start another ML or get rid of a few of these beasts. Too bad, I wanted to see if Kim Cyun Hi could score 1000 goals.
Strange, I think C Ronaldo is at Real Madrid in mine as well. (I think life will imitate art this summer.)
If I ever got to the stage of winning consecutive Trebles I’d be disappointed but not too much. I’m still having a great time with this game.
Don’t get me wrong, I love winning, and thumping the likes of R. Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester United EVERY season at the European finals is a delight, but it’s gotten to a point where Kim has scored 55 goals with at least 10 more games to the end of the season, and it’s only eventually that a game is hard to win.
But I think I’ll insist until I get to the 1000 mark. Then I’ll either start from scratch or dump a bunch of players. I’m already giving away a lot of my credits to other teams in my league to make them stronger.
I traded Alexandre Pato and Rafael Sobis in plus 100000 credits for a couple of 38-year-old nobobies whom I subsequently released. Schwarz and Park Jiun Hi are next. I might also let Nijkamp, Merino, Denilson and Feurer all go, as they’re just warming the bench as it is.
It’ll be interesting to see how my play style and Kim Cyun Hi get along. Will he be the same kind of player for me? After the dribblefest of the PS3 game, I’ve reverted to my usual PES playing style of pass and move. I never dribbled before - it’s a rare game when I’ll try to get past more than one player, and even that’s a pretty rare event.
I bet Kim will be great for you even if you don’t dribble at all.
He’s a very good player to pressure the opposing defenders with. I’ve scored countless goals by stealing the ball in their own half and speeding on my own towards the goal.
As much as I like build-up plays, I’m a dribbler at heart. I’m GOOD at it. I love using R2, especially.
I need to get myself another memory card to start saving replays. Or I’ll just use my camcord to record them. I keep postponing it.
I having scored any volleys with Kim, though. I’ve tried, but haven’t had any success.
Adriano - it does indeed sound as if you’re the kind of PES player that I am emphatically not! One of the reasons I ended up disliking the game on the PS3 was the sudden ability I had to dribble, as you know. I loved coming back to the last-gen version, where I’ve never been able to dribble and I still can’t. I can go past one player, sometimes two, if I’m already moving at full speed. But all the stop-starting, side-stepping, R2-dribbling? I’ve never done it.
You should try it. I don’t do it all the time, but it’s very useful sometimes. Of course, you have to watch out, because with certain players it starts to seem like cheating, just like chasing an opposing player pressing R1 and X with someone like Bradley, you know it’s a matter of time until he overpasses the other player to get to the ball, and 90% of the time that’s what happens. You have to watch yourself sometimes to keep playing realistically in this game, I’m afraid.