Ho Ho No
In last season’s negotiation period I picked up a famous old Master League name. Well, he’s famous to those of us who first sampled his skills back in PES5. I am speaking about Orellano, a made-up Konami player (as far as I know), and one of the best.
Or better to say: he’s back to his best. I had Orellano in my ML teams in PES6 and in PES2008 (both versions), and he wasn’t that great to be honest. I didn’t find him so, anyway; other opinions are available.
Orellano seems back to his best in PES2009, to the extent that he’s one of the best strikers on my books, even at the tender age of 19. But there’s one problem, and it’s threatening to wreck his homecoming parade: he’s never in the right condition to play. Like most other Master Leaguers, I never play players with grey form arrows, and I only play players with blue form arrows if I absolutely have to. Orellano’s form arrow is almost always grey or blue. At the moment he’s fit to play in approximately 1 game in 6.
It’s a shame on so many levels, as when he does play he’s one of the liveliest players to have up front. I always play him out wide on the left or right in my front 3. He has a startling success rate out there, coming inside to have dangerous shots and score quite regularly. When he’s not shooting himself he’s crossing the ball for others to score. In PES2009, crossing is arguably the least effective it’s ever been in PES. Having a player who does seem able to pose a threat with crosses is a big advantage to have in a tight match. Orellano is definitely my best crosser at the moment.
My start to this season has been patchy to say the least. A draw and a win and then another draw. And then a great win, featuring a hat-trick from Orellano. 3 classic strikes: one with either foot, and the third a header from a corner. Late on he even crossed for Kim Cyun Hi to nod in a rare headed goal of his own. I won that match 4-1. The CPU team’s traditional last-minute goal was only a consolation for them, and couldn’t spoil my good humour.
This good form meant I was in an unusual position. I was in the top 10 in the league after several games. Could this be the season I finally threaten to finish in at least a European place?
Sadly things went tits-up in my very next game. Pre-season, I took a thrashing from an Italian club when Sampdoria beat me 5-1 in a friendly. Here in the league I came up against AC Milan, a team who I haven’t really had any trouble with over the past two seasons, as I recall. In the current match they seemed to play turbo-charged, incredible football throughout. Kaka’ was immense for them, and scored twice as they utterly demolished me 5-1. My goal was just a late consolation.
So it seems as if I’m all set for another mediocre season in Division 1. Certainly if the first clutch of matches is anything to go by, another mid-table finish is the best I can hope for. But we’ll see.
Tomorrow, Christmas Day, I’ll post a special ‘chart countdown’ of my favourite PES games, and I’ll share some special memories associated with all of them. Then I’ll have a mini-break from the blog until after New Year, although I’ll still respond to any comments in the meantime. I intend to have a mini-break from PES as well, and play some of the half-dozen great unplayed games on my shelf. I will resume the tale of this ML career on January 2nd 2009, and pick up from where today has left off.
I just have to respectfully disagree that PES2009 is the “worst crossing game”, as I am raining in goals against the CPU with balls in from the wing.
The key is to not just run down the touch line and hit the cross button, or even double tap on the fly — you have to put some sort of move on the CPU side-back — a cut-back, a shimmy and a fake, or the like — and then bomb one in.
It also helps to hold down R1 as the cross is launched to get some extra height and distance on it.
Works for me!
I also find these goals immensely satisfying.
Surfer Dude – I found it very effective in PES2008 (PS2/PSP) to adjust the angle of my player’s run just a fraction before crossing. That doesn’t work in PES2009 and I had been making do with ‘vanilla crossing’, favouring the single-press cross over the double-tap, which used to be my favourite. I will give the ‘putting some moves on’ technique a stab. I really have found PES2009 very weak for crossing, which is no bad thing really.
I’ve found PES2009 is seeing me score less goals from crosses than I have in the past but not to such a low level that it becomes a problem. In fact from what I can tell it’s just about spot on at the moment.
Of course this is coming over a very short period, I’m still not at the end of my 1st season. To add to that I’m yet to actually recored a league win in my first season, I just played out a thrilling 2-2 draw although it seems that the only games I am able to score in are ones where the opposition does likewise.
I did make it through to the semi’s of the Cup though which was a real surprise, my 2 wins for this season were both 1-0, and both in the cup and I held 0-0 draws in the other leg of both of the first 2 rounds before being dealt some of my own medicine, going down 1-0 in the semi.
stinger - there are far too many blatant shenanigans in the first couple of ML seasons. The old ML routine where if you score the CPU team will sweep straight upfield from kickoff and score themselves. It’s not that realistic for teams to concede goals immediately after scoring, or vice versa. It does happen in real life—but how often does it really happen? I can’t remember the last time I saw it happen in a real game.
I found a lot of early success in the D2 cup as well. I think everyone has this year. In years past I’d always go out in the first round. So I think there are more ‘behind the scenes’ shenanigans there, albeit working in the player’s favour.
Oh for the day (not far off I hope) when there are no shenanigans at all in a football game.