Return of the Zak
A new season begins—season 15 of what is becoming quite a PES odyssey. Thanks to last season’s undignified collapse (I won nothing, and finally did well to finish 3rd in the league), I faced serious financial problems for the first time in a number of seasons. Panic-buying Morientes for over £20m didn’t do the damage. (I more or less offset that expenditure by immediately selling another player for about the same amount.) My poor season meant that I missed out on prize money. I also overspent on skill cards for many players, and I splurged £4m on extra positional training for two players (Capuano and Castolo). It all left me a good £15m short of the amount required to stay in the black.
I cut my Fan Club and Youth Team levels from 5 to 4, saving £10m at a stroke. I put a few players on the transfer list. Zaki was among them—cash crises in Master League are always a time for unsentimental ruthlessness. But there were no bids at all for anybody. This was unusual for a transfer window in PES2010 ‘s Master League, where you’re usually fighting off the AI clubs with a stick.
With just a week to go before Budget Day, I needed to do something fast. I looked at the wages and saw that my fading 32-year-old striker, Itzhaki, was on a salary of £4.5m per year. I took a deep breath, and released him. I scraped through Budget Day with just under £5000 to spare, the closest I’ve come in many seasons to incurring the automatic staff/player reduction penalty.
Itzhaki’s summary release caused instant unhappiness among the rest of my squad (left), but it would fade soon enough. Releasing Itzhaki was tough, but it achieved the desired effect. It was a good old-fashioned seat-of-the-pants squeak through the negotiations window to end in profit. In the old days you risked the dreaded GAME OVER. Now, the penalty is ‘only’ a random reduction of staffing levels and/or players being sold without your consent. Whichever, it’s still hard-coded into my Master League genes to avoid any end-of-season debt at all costs, so that is what I seek to do, and what I did in this case. I will stand or fall accordingly.
The last bit of pre-season business was a kit-change. I left my away kit as it was (as pictured at the top of this post, being worn by The Myth of Castolo). For season 15 I went back to basics with a new home kit (right). It’s a traditional plain sky blue with white trimmings.
And so to the football, where things are going rather well. I’m second on goal difference after about 10 matches. I huffed and puffed my way to a narrow win over newly-promoted Anderlecht. Then I thumped Arsenal 3-0. Why is that always the case in Master League, no matter what else changes?
Among my fine wins against top opposition was a 7-0 (SEVEN-NIL) demolition of Porto at their ground. Almost everything I tried seemed to just work. Zaki was born again in this match, getting a hat-trick. He’s also scored a few in other matches, and is now getting back to his old strike rate before last season’s calamitous injury. His hat-trick goal was set up by Castolo, on as sub, who took the free kick that sparked a training-ground type of move:
Link: 
I’m very cautiously optimistic that The Myth of Castolo might actually shape up to be a useful player in time. He’s painfully acquired another point or two of OVR rating—up to 63 now—and no longer feels like so much of a liability. He still has the turning circle of a tank. And he still has the ridiculous reputation that’s nowadays staggeringly out of all proportion to reality, but that’s myths for you: stubborn as hell.
My Champions League qualifying group this season is made up of Inter Milan, Besiktas, and Boca Juniors. It’s nice to have a group without Juventus for a change. I played the first two fixtures, beat Inter 2-0 quite easily, and I beat Boca Juniors 1-0 in a tighter game. Once again I doubt I’ll have much trouble qualifying. It’s the knockout matches I’m terrified of. I can’t wait to see if I get French opposition in the second round again, as I have done in all four of the seasons I’ve played in the CL so far. If I do, something is definitely going on there.
I’m also still in the D1 Cup, of course. I’d have mentioned it by now if I wasn’t, if the Treble was once again out of reach. At this stage, about a quarter of the way through season 15, it’s still very much on.
It’s shocking to look at your cash flow after so many 20 mil + seasons. One season of modest success and you basically have to start over? Master League is definitely tough on the small teams this year.
You know what, I’m playing FIFA every day, and loving it, but I still stop by here regularly to check out your Master League. Just looking a the PES-style squad lists brings a wave of nostalgia. Master League looks simply incredible this year. The gameplay still looks primitive (despite some of your great goals) yet I sometimes think about picking up PES despite having plenty of other games to play through. Not-greg you should try to make time for Bayonetta, its incredible. Perhaps after you’ve finished Batman, Uncharted, Lost Odyssey etc…
Ken—It is tough, but for the past few seasons I’ve always been able to sell a few players to raise a bit of cash. I was caught out this time by the AI not being interested in anything I had to offer. It’s going to be tough to get through the next Budget Day unless I win the Treble or make a big sale or two.
Grilled Seabass—make no mistake, I believe in FIFA10′s quality—as my last posts on the game showed before Master League 2010 (that’s the game’s real name) came along. I will get back to FIFA10 at some point, and it’ll be like the ecstatic early posts of October all over again, I’d bet. All last summer—anticipating two good games that I would want to play—I said that I would not diminish either game by trying to play them both at the same time, and I’ve stuck to that.
I understand your nostalgia for Master League, and believe me, it is a dream of a mode this year. In lots of ways this is the PES experience on next-gen that I craved in 2007.
I know I’m one of the rare fortunate ones for whom PES2010 has delivered. I know that many—perhaps most?—PES fans are by turns disappointed in (or even horrified by) PES2010 for various reasons. Which camp would you fall into? I’d put money on you being appalled by PES2010, especially now after your FIFA10 experiences. That’s partly why it’s important to me to suck all the juice out of PES2010 before I pick up FIFA10 again, in case it’d ruin things for me.
Hmmm, maybe. If I got past the step down in quality of gameplay, I think the main turn-off could be the difficulty. I’ve found that even FIFA10 on legendary isn’t difficult for me, so I worry about reports of low difficult on PES2010. I just miss the the evolution of squads and the kit-editing in ML SO much.
Slap Master League onto FIFA’s game engine and you’d have a game that could lead to severe difficulties in my relationship followed by a trip to one of those clinics for game addicts.
Have you bought MATHIEU, because on a screenshot you posted on twitter of your shortlist there is a departure icon next to MATHIEU.
Grilled Seabass—that really puzzles me about PES2010, the constant reports of the game being too easy for an awful lot of players. It’s what I found last year and especially the year before, but it (mercifully) hasn’t happened to me this year. If you’re finding FIFA10 Legendary easy (or at least not difficult), I think you’d be almost certainly guaranteed to be a ‘three-season Trebler’ in PES2010.
Chris—I’ve been aching for a FIFA Master League-style mode for a long time. Ultimate Team promised much but delivered little IMO. I hope they’re working on something like ML for FIFA11.
patrick222—the 17-year-old Regen Mathieu is on the move in that screenshot of my current scouted players (also appearing in tomorrow’s post), but ‘only’ a loan move and not to me, sadly. I just missed out on him and another club got in there first. I’ll be able to have another go in the next window.
@ Chris:
The problem with that, though, is that what makes Master League so unique is the player individuality in the game engine. Without it, there’s no real reason to carry on developing players, signing new ones, and having to deal with the subtleties of weaving new talent into the team chemistry. That’s what makes ML special: finally signing someone decent, and being able to see and feel the subtle differences in the way that player “plays” on the pitch relative to his teammates. From all accounts, FIFA10 still doesn’t achieve the same level of unique player individualism. That, in my opinion, would hamper any management mode.
That’s a good point Ken. Plus I would imagine that the ‘fictional’ structure of a Master League would alienate the ‘boot and haircut’ brigade that make up a fair portion of FIFA’s core market. I should imagine it would be exceptionally hard for EA to create something as in depth as ML and keep to their promise of a billion different leagues etc etc