It’s well-known in the real-life professional game, by fans, players, and coaches alike, that a former player returning to play against an old club is more likely to score a goal than not score a goal. It’s just the way it works. The former player always scores.

It seems to work that way in PES2008 as well. I’m fully resigned to having my former ace striker Elcherino score against me every time I meet him in another team’s colours.

He’s still with Real Zaragoza at the moment—although the day cannot be far away when I buy him back just to put him on my bench and keep him there. My current House Rules forbid me from playing him in my team. The whole sorry Elcherino saga bubbled up over the Christmas and New Year period, and almost derailed my next-gen PES2008 career permanently. At the moment I’m taking a dim view of next-gen PES2008, but it’s not Elcherino’s or anybody else’s fault really. The game is just too easy. That’s its problem in a nutshell.

I went 0-1 up against Zaragoza (at their ground) and was cruising. Elcherino wasn’t in their starting line-up. He came on in the second half and got their equaliser almost immediately—a simple tap-in from a CPU cutback. I managed to keep him quiet after that, and scored my winner in the dying moments just when I’d resigned myself to a frustrating draw. 1-2 to me. Take that, Elcherino.

Next were one of the division pace-setters—Inter Milan, the wet dream-team of many an online PES2008 player. This one was a draw, 2-2. I was 2-0 up and comfortable with it, but started to get a little over-enthusiastic in my tackling as I tried to keep it that way. I had Matuzalem sent off, and Inter got it back to 2-1. Then I had Jackson sent off and they got it back to 2-2. I had several chances to score more goals myself but missed them all.

After Inter Milan, I had to play Barcelona. It was the game I’d been waiting for all season.

This screen was not what I wanted to see before the game:

What great timing. It’s only the biggest game of my season so far. Thanks, France.

(Incidentally, looking at that screenshot, it strikes me that for all the Internet chatter about greengrocer’s apostrophes and whatnot, a good case could be made for the exclamation mark being the single most overused and abused punctuation mark in the English language! They seem to be scattered everywhere!!)

I decided to just get on and do without Mathieu—no great loss, really, as he’s still not yet the triple-A player I knew in PES5 and PES6. Pjinatnigh came in at DMF. The remainder of my team was mostly fit and in form.

Melengue got the first goal—a sort of wonder dribble, but he only beat two Barcelona players before scoring, so it doesn’t really count. (A true wonder dribble, which can be accomplished in every single game in next-gen PES2008, sees the player ghosting past almost the entire opposition.)

Caracciolo got me another goal in the second half. Here it is:

And that’s how it finished. Singers FC 2-0 Barcelona. I am dumbfounded to be top of the league after 12 games.

Earlier this season when I played Spurs, neither of us were challenging for promotion and/or the championship, and thus I played the game with relaxed attention—the best way to play PES. I won that game 1-0, but it was close.

Now the return fixture in the second half of the season… and I was all over Spurs, dominating possession, having four times as many shots/shots on target, and running out the 2-1 winner.

I was 2-0 up until the 85th minute when (familiar story, this) they ‘won’ a corner and then auto-scored a header, making the last five minutes ‘tense and exciting’. I have almost no words left for this kind of thing. Curse you Seabass, etc.

After the game was finished, my Team Popularity went up to ‘B’:

Next up were Villarreal, who I find to be a funny team, in the sense that they’re unpredictable and a bit strange.

The game ended 1-1. I took the lead with this very nice clipped diving header from Caracciolo:

But then in the dying moments of the game Villarreal got a corner, and scored from it. Sigh.

The next game was against the current league leaders, Espanyol.

I beat them easily, working off a lot of pent-up frustration: Singers FC 5-1 Espanyol. Kmolo scored a hat trick. (Espanyol’s solitary goal came late in the game—from a corner…)

And that result boosted me up to 1st place. I’m top on goal difference with 5 games to go. Come on you Singers…

I received another bye in the D2 Cup—a great relief, as I want to get off to a good start this season. I don’t need a two-legged Cup tie getting in the way and tiring my players, thank you very much.

In my third game I played one of last season’s relegated teams, Paris St Germain. I was wary. This team has always been a tough one to crack, and now was no exception. I went 0-1 down early on—a familiar story—but pulled it back to win 2-1. Caracciolo got both of my goals, my first ‘proper’ goals in the league this season.

Next up were Sunderland, a team that I’m determined not to regard as my bogey team. Nevertheless, Sunderland always do everything possible to demonstrate that they are my bogey team. One of the many things I have not ever mentioned in this blog is that Daryl Murphy, the famous Sunderland striker, always plays against me like some kind of Super-Pele.

After I went into the lead and was cruising, I started to get worried about not scoring another goal. My PES spider sense was tingling. Anytime now, I thought, Daryl’s gonna pop up again…

And he did. But this abomination should never have been a goal. (Curse you Seabass…)

The clip shows Daryl Murphy clean through on goal. I charge my keeper out and, I think, get there in time to smother Murphy’s shot. But no—the ball passes straight through my keeper’s groin. Then, just to make me feel even worse, the ball rolls into the net after at first clearly heading wide. Apparently my keeper’s phased groin at least had enough material substance to impart a touch of spin to the ball. Ridiculous.

Collision detection in PES has always been ropey. But PES2008 boasts, among its many little faults, the franchise’s worst-ever collision detection. At least if it was consistent and worked both ways it might be more acceptable.

Take a look at this referee:

The ref is standing there, staring the other way. I’m trying to run Leonardo out wide and think I’ve got plenty of room to do so. Then the referee abruptly turns and runs through Leonardo. A second later, Leonardo stumbles sideways as if he’d been shoulder-charged by a linebacker. Leaving the ball in open space, ready for the CPU to come in and collect…

After all of these shenanigans I took on PSV, another relegated team, and lost 0-3. The game was rigged, I swear it! Okay, to tell the truth I simply played badly, with anger and impatience—which you just cannot get away with in PES.

I decided to leave things there for this session and go to cool down. At least I didn’t have anyone sent off today.