Whoops. I did a very bad thing. It’s not the worst thing I could’ve done. I haven’t started reloading old saves to get different results or anything disgraceful like that. Nor am I about to declare my love for FIFA2001 or World Tour Soccer 2 or whatever. The very bad thing that I’ve done is actually quite small and innocent and harmless. And I hope I’m not alone in having done it. It’s this: I’ve accidentally played the Division 1 Cup final without realising it.
I don’t know for certain, but I suspect that most Master League players—perhaps all Master League players—have at some time played a cup match without realising that it was a cup match. I’ve done it lots of times, too many times to recount, and occasionally I’ve done it in the finals of Cups. I did it again today—I played the final of the Division 1 Cup without noticing it was the final of the Division 1 Cup until the end of 90 minutes. Doh…
It’s so easy to get into the routine of pressing X repeatedly and moving onto the next game without paying any attention to what the next game actually is. When I got to a pre-match screen and saw that Valencia were my next opponents I was instantly focused and excited. Aha! Here was the league six-pointer, I thought, that would decide the destiny of the league championship this season… So in a way I was fortunate that my D1 Cup final opponents were Valencia. It meant that I took the game very seriously anyway. If it’d been anyone else I might not have played with such vim and vigour…
I took the lead early in what I thought was just another big league game. Then, predictably, I had to watch as the AI took over almost every aspect of the gameplay. I really was just pressing buttons helplessly for a while as Valencia screamed back into things to make it 1-2 to them. Only then was full control returned to me and my players.
It astounds me that there is still an ‘argument’ running about whether or not scripting in PES even exists. I don’t care what anyone says. I know what I have seen and felt over the years, particularly over the past three years. The cumulative weight of evidence shows unambiguously that human players are handicapped under certain conditions. I call this scripting.
When you think about it (and I think about it more than is probably healthy), scripting is logical and necessary and, if done right, a great boon to any sports game. But I don’t think it’s been done right in PES for a couple of versions. It’s too heavy-handed, too obvious. Making a five-yard pass result in the ball bouncing off the human player’s all-star winger’s shins into touch, just so the CPU can have the ball back to maintain its preposterous level of pressure, is not best programming practice, if you ask me. Yes, Team Seabass might have been forced into this kind of measure after a decade of PES games and the increasing sophistication of the PES-playing public. But shouldn’t they be seeking another paradigm of Artificial Intelligence to put into their game by now? It’s a big, deep subject—a controversial subject for many—and I could write about it every day for the rest of the PES year if I wanted to. But I’ve got an accidental Cup final to get back to…
I didn’t exactly help myself. I went down to 10 men soon after the supercharged CPU script stopped running. It was my old nasty habit of frustratedly scything down attacking players almost for the hell of it. The Valencia player wasn’t even really going anywhere. Fernando Couto, my silky centre-back, made the long walk. I rejigged my formation, going to three centre-backs and leaving everything else as it was. If I hadn’t been behind I would have subbed a striker and gone with just two up front. But I had to get a goal back and I needed all my attacking options open to me.
In any case, I always play well with 10 men (and sometimes with 8 men). Sure enough, about 15 minutes from the end, I got my equaliser, a tap-in from Kim Cyun Hi after some nice build-up play and one-twos around the box. But I needed to win! This was a League six-pointer! So I still thought, anyway.
With my brave 10 men, I completely went for it. I’d rather lose this LEAGUE GAME while going all-out for a win than settle for a draw. I needed to close the gap at the top of the table. I tried and tried, but just couldn’t get another goal. I lived dangerously at the back, but (miraculously at times) avoided conceding. Eventually the final whistle went and I grimaced. A draw was not a good result for me. Valencia would keep their six-point lead with only a couple of games to go. Without really looking at the post-match screen, I pressed X to take me back to the ML menu…
But the screen cleared and suddenly I was playing again. Me, with my 10 men, against Valencia. With the score tied at 2-2. What the…? Only now did the penny drop. This was the first period of extra time! This was the Division 1 Cup Final! Arrgghhh…. I felt a little foolish, but like I said, it’s happened to me before so I wasn’t too freaked out. And I felt relieved. It meant that the six-pointer against them in the League was still to come. Oh, and I was playing the Cup final, and could still win it…
Or not. After all of that, I lost the Cup final on penalties. I scored one of my penalties. Just one. Pathetic, I know. I’m usually a lot better at penalties, even in PES where they’re more of a lottery than in real life. Why do some players mysteriously blast their penalties over the bar or wide? There is no way of controlling what they actually do with their penalty kicks. This badly needs to change.
Extra time had passed quickly, as it always does when you play 10-minute matches. I hadn’t really created anything. In truth I’d tensed up after I knew it was the Cup final. I played a lot more conservatively in the 30 minutes of extra time than in the last 30 minutes of normal time, when I played with a dashing, devil-may-care freedom. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d never known, and just gone on playing naturally… There’s a lesson about something or other in there somewhere.
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Been there done that. Never had the misfortune of losing said game, fortunately. Would I have reloaded? Perhaps. I don’t take gaming that seriously or maybe my ethics are somewhat more flexible than yours in that respect.
I drew the game after 90 and 120 minutes. If it’d been any team other than Valencia and I thought it was just another league game my concentration wouldn’t have been 100% and I might have felt justified in reloading. But as it turned out I felt satisfied that I’d played it ‘as if’ it was a cup final despite thinking it was only a league game.
It was a pretty good game overall and exciting right up to the penalty shootout. It would have been a shame to expunge it from the record by reloading. I hope to look back from season 2025 or so and think ‘aaah, remember when I played the 2017 D1 Cup final without realising it and it was an epic game anyway…’ That’s one of the main reasons why I never reload, come what may. It’d spoilt the story of the Master League.