The 2019 season is almost here and it’s time to discuss my attitude towards Regens in Master League. At this stage of a career the established players who populated the game at the beginning all start to retire. I’m thinking of the likes of Rooney, Torres, Gerrard, Kaka—all among the very best players that the game has to offer. Lots of PES players forbid themselves from having Regens or Classic players

My policy on Regens and Classic players is simple: I’m allowed to have them. Next-gen PES2008 and a certain Mr Elcherino apart, they’re not overpowered for me in ‘original’ PES and they never have been. I’m only an average PES player and the Regens don’t ruin my game—they enhance it. Part of the fun of playing an ML career indefinitely all year, as I do, is bearing witness to the comings and goings of the great players. When Rooney retires—as he will in the next few seasons—and returns as a 17-year-old, will he be as good or better than he was the first time around? In my experience, the Regens are usually better, because you get the opportunity to develop them from the start of their new career or soon afterwards. That’s if you can get them as soon as they regenerate, of course.

You have to keep a close eye on the Youth list to catch the Regens you want as soon as they regenerate. Otherwise an AI club will swoop in for them and you’ll end up having to pay a king’s ransom further down the line. But sometimes that’s okay. If I’ve got a large squad and I’m always playing big games, a raw 17-year-old won’t get many appearances. Often it’s more efficient to let a young player develop at another club for a few seasons before trying to get him. By this stage of an ML career, money is usually no object.

Thierry Henry was sitting in the Non-Affiliated list just waiting to be picked up. He’s 20 years old. Obviously he must have popped up as a Regen a few seasons ago and I somehow missed seeing him (which was very sloppy of me). The peculiar thing is that no AI club snapped him up, which is what usually happens to the great Regens. Never mind. I was happy to find him waiting for me to give him a home.

Another striker I picked up, albeit on a ‘proper’ transfer, was a 24-year-old Christian Vieri. This player was a semi-legend for me back in the halcyon days of PES5. He’s only young at the moment and looking good again. I offered his club Shevchenko+a few thousand points for him, and of course they took my offer. Shevchenko was disappointing for me. He always seemed rather lightweight on the ball, and he lacked his legendary pace. In a game where every great attacking player has got explosive pace, Shevchenko just seemed rather ordinary. Maybe next time, Andriy.

Back in the Non-Affiliated list (I do flit around among these lists during a transfer period) I found a quality centre-back called Runzal, and added him to my squad. Last season I just felt I was conceding too easily too often. I still don’t know what is at greater fault, my carelessness or the more open, attacking play of PES2008. It’s probably a mix of both, but a top-quality extra CB won’t hurt.

Back in the Youth list proper, I couldn’t see any legends reborn. So I located and got a couple of solid old PES names—Chivu and Caracciolo. Chivu will be a good replacment for Roberto Carlos at LB when the latter eventually ages and declines, as he will inevitably do at some stage. Caracciolo was a great striker for me on next-gen PES2008—yes, yes, yes, everyone is a great striker on the shallow next-gen PES2008, but I’m curious to see how the big man performs here in a classic PES. These two are both 17, so their opportunities in the coming few seasons will be limited. I will try to play them whenever I feel I can get away with it, though.

Regarding my First XI, it’s time to make a long-overdue decision. Kim Cyun Hi has to go and sit on the bench, at least for now. He’s been a very good striker but, for me, hardly the prodigious talent that other PES players have found him to be. I suppose it comes down to differing play-styles as well as a certain random element within individual Master League careers. I’m sure Kim will be an excellent stand-in striker when called upon, as he often will be.

Schwarz therefore returns to his natural role in the centre of my strikeforce. Thinking back across all the PES years, I’ve always played with a big man in the middle of my front three. The last few seasons with Kim Cyun Hi in that position have been exceptions. So I’m going back to my roots.

Del Piero has now got too good to be left out of the First XI. He’s 24 right now in my Master League, and a true phenomenon. Leaving him out of my First XI now would be a crime against Pro Evolution Soccer. He’s not a natural CF but he’s always played superbly there when required. I’ll pick him in place of Andy Cole, who also drops to the bench.

Giggs is irreplaceable out there on the left. I’ve always regarded Stoichkov in PES3 as the best left-sided striker I’ve ever played with in PES, but Giggs could take that crown. It’ll be another few seasons before I can be sure, but the boy is a real wonder.

Back in the centre of defence, Couto has been good but not great. Runzal, my new CB, is statistically worse than Couto, but I want to develop Runzal, so in he comes.

I had to release some players. I had no further need for Larsson, Jong-a-Pin, and Laurito. This leaves my squad at a very healthy 28 players. I think this is the optimum number necessary for what will be a very ambitious season 2019.

In 2019 I want to win the Treble, and last the whole league season unbeaten, and concede less than 20 goals. We’ll see how all of that goes…

The end of season 2018 saw me 9 points clear at the top of the table with three games to go. My goal difference was a lot better than Valencia’s, the second-placed team. So even if I lost all three games (which would never happen anyway, not even to me, an average sort of PES player) the title was guaranteed to be mine regardless. As expected, I won the next game—game 28—and Valenica could only draw. And that was that. I’d won the League. Hoo-rah…

It’s only my third or fourth Championship (I think), so I’d be entitled to feel very happy with it. And I do feel very happy with it. Really I do. But… the whole season has felt like a bit of an anti-climax. I was knocked out of the Division 1 Cup in the first round, ending my hopes for a Treble. That was disappointing, but I had the chance of a great consolation prize: to finish the season unbeaten in the league. That gave me hope of securing something remarkable from this season, but the run came to an end recently with defeat at the hands of the division’s bottom club. So I can’t quite shake a feeling of ‘could’ve done better’. I suppose I’ll just have to rectify matters in season 2019…

Before I get to that, though, there’s the trifling matter of a European Cup final to deal with. My opponents were Lazio. I don’t think I’ve played them at all yet in this career. Actually, I’ve just checked back through the archives and I definitely haven’t played them yet. (I have played Lazio in PES2008, but it was in that other version of PES2008 that we don’t like to talk about.)

Lazio were staggeringly good. Even for a souped-up team playing in a cup final (the CPU team is always souped-up), Lazio delivered possibly the single best performance against me from any CPU team. They were faster, stronger, and yes, they were luckier. I can’t really make my traditional complaint about scripting per se. Once again I think my defensive failings in this match were mostly of my own making. But all match it seemed at times that Lazio’s players were immune to tackling—or, if they were tackled, then my players would mysteriously walk away a few paces and stop dead while the CPU player recovered his wits and the ball and raced away with it… Words cannot do justice to the sense of injustice I feel whenever this happens.

But anyway. Lazio were brilliant and the non-tackling issue was relatively minor in comparison. They took the lead, I equalised, then I took the lead—it was 2-1 to me at half-time. I was pretty comfortably holding them at bay. The second half started with a hurricane of incessant Lazio attacks. I still held out, but inevitably buckled towards the end, just when the finishing line was coming into sight. Gutted. 2-2, and looking like extra time. Then I made a schoolboy error.

A Lazio striker broke through my defence out on the right wing and headed in toward goal. I should know better, but I advanced my keeper by pressing Triangle. For a couple of versions now, there’s been a fault when advancing your keeper at an angle towards an attacker. The keeper makes a beeline toward where the ball was at the start of your Triangle-pressing, ignoring the CPU player’s continued run. This leaves a massive gap that the CPU player can hardly fail to score into. That’s what happened here.

2-3 to Lazio in the 90th minute. There was hardly time to restart. I had a token run down their wing, lost the ball, and the final whistle went. Ouch. This one hurt.

After the disappointment of losing the European Cup final I took my eye off the ball in league game 29, and lost 0-1 to Recreativo de Huelva. That meant I’d lost two games all season. Disappointing, but with the unbeaten record already gone, it wasn’t disastrous. I rallied for the final game of the season and trounced Deportivo la Coruna 6-0. My strikers ran riot. Andy Cole got a hat-trick, Giggs got two, and Kim Cyun Hi got the remainder.

My end-of-season record in the league is a pretty healthy one. I finished 1st with 74 points from thirty games. I won 23 games, drew 5 games, and lost 2 games (grrr). I scored 74 goals and conceded 24 goals, giving me a goal difference of +50. Now that’s pretty good—Valencia, the next-best team in the whole division, had a goal difference of around +18 at the end of the season. If I could just tighten up at the back a bit—in all competitions—I might well get into that ‘Treble every year’ zone where I want to be. We’ll see how it goes.

Next up is the pre-season 2019 negotiations period. With the seasons passing, it’s time to start making some plans for the future. I’ll be visiting the Youth list. And I’ll also be rearranging my First XI. It’s time to make some tough decisions.

I only had time for one game today. One solitary game of PES2008. Time really is in short supply these days. At least it was an important game—possibly a title-winning game.

It’s game 27 of season 2018. I’m 9 points clear of the team in second place, Valencia. I came up against Recreativo de Huelva. I don’t remember mentioning them before. I don’t remember ever hearing about them before, out in the real world, despite them being the oldest football club in Spain. I think they must be the Spanish equivalent of Bolton Wanderers.

I beat them 6-0, easily. It felt great. At the final whistle my players started running around like maniacs and hugging each other. Naturally, I assumed that other results had gone my way and I’d won the league. However, I didn’t see any awards ceremony afterward, and the game went straight back to the ML menu.

Could I have pressed START too enthusiastically and skipped the awards ceremony by accident? I hate it when that happens. RPG games are the worst for that. There’s a big, pregnant pause during which the game appears frozen, and eventually you pluck up the courage to press START experimentally, only for that press to come a split-second after a lengthy (and probably important) cutscene has started, which of course you have now skipped by mistake. Whoops. I thought maybe I’d done the same thing here in PES2008 with my league championship awards ceremony.

Then I took a look at the league table. Valencia had won their game as well. I was still 9 points ahead, with three games left. So, it was mathematically possible—in theory—for them to overtake me if I lost all my remaining games and they won all theirs. Never mind the fact that my goal difference is so much larger than theirs that they’d have to win them all 12-0. That’s just not going to happen, not even in PES.

So the league is mine. I’ll just have to wait for another game or two to make it official. Before I play another league game, I have to play the European Cup final. It’ll be against Lazio. That’ll have to happen tomorrow now.