PES Chronicles

I had an excellent start to season 13, but then suffered a peculiar run of league matches. I kept losing 1-0, two in a row at one point. Then I drew 0-0, then lost 1-0 again. I didn’t score at all for about five matches. This was all in one particular session of play, I might add. PES has always had this session-to-session change in character. It’s nothing new. Talk of gameplay patches—lacking official confirmation of such—is and always has been misplaced, IMO. Speaking of myths…

I stormed to the top spot in my Champions League group, qualified easily, and I had the luxury of playing Castolo from the start in both of the last two matches. That’s invaluable experience for a youngster, but every time I play with Castolo I wonder why I’m bothering. Of course, I’m bothering because of the myth of Castolo.

How goes Project Castolo? Not too well. Nursing him through his brief appearances is a mini-game in its own right. It’s as if the burger van man has been given a kit and told to go out and play. He’s gained a few points of OVR rating. His turning speed and first touch and general movement are all terrible. He plays like a twat, really.

I was never under pressure in either of Castolo’s full matches and so I never needed him to be more than he was, which I suppose was adequate. He got an assist for a goal in the second match. I’ve also brought him on as sub a lot in the league. He actually appears on the pitch a lot more than some of my  mature squad members. As I’ve said before, I want to see some tangible results sooner rather than later. I won’t keep Castolo for longer than 5 seasons. One thing I might do after the end of this season is splurge some money on skill cards for him. That could help. But I’ll only do this if I’ve got money to burn after taking care of regular business, i.e., my staff and player salaries and any transfers I can pull off.

In the league, I went on the customary winning run. It was only punctuated by a frustrating Man Utd tie that I seemed fated to lose 0-1 (again), and did.

I’ve played several more matches than is shown here. I’m comfortably ahead in the table, 6 or 7 points clear. It’s my title to lose.

Here are a couple of goals from the current phase of league games. The first is a waspish finish from my created player, not-Greg, that clatters in off the post and bar—it was a late winner and it meant a lot. The second is a sweet volley from Nakamura that I tried to post on Twitter the other night, but somehow it vanished into the ether on the way:

Link:

The mid-season transfer window has been and gone. I picked up two players, first an experienced DMF called Clement (85OVR) who’s a bit like Mathieu, albeit without the shooting prowess. Second was a Youth teamster called Jaromton. He’s a CF, currently rated 64OVR, and he’s already everything that Castolo is not, i.e., good. He handles well and has already got a few goals in a couple of appearances, unlike Castolo, who struggles to stand upright a lot of the time.

In the Champions League, the draw for the Second Round has been made. That confused me for a start. I thought the Champions League goes from a group stage straight into the Quarter Finals? There’s no last 16 stage in reality, is there? Is this more Japanese eccentricity, or is it me failing to notice?

Anyway, the draw paired me with… Stade Rennais. I’m terrified. This is not a joke. Last season I was dumped out by RC Lens. The season before, by FC Sochaux. These minor French teams are my Champions League Kryptonite. Friday’s post will have the whole story.

Season 13 of my Master League career. And, hey, look at that: it’s March 1st, 2010. It’s nearly springtime. I’m playing a PES game with a fervour unmatched since the halcyon days of PES5. I still can’t believe it. I consider myself fortunate indeed.

It’s a great football game year, especially with FIFA10 waiting on the sidelines for if/when PES2010 fades. Even if PES2010 doesn’t fade, I might soon take a few days off to play the ‘other game’. This is something I’ve thought about doing a lot recently, as the ML seasons pass. FIFA10 is too good a game, IMO, to allow it to sit for long.

But I probably won’t play FIFA10, even for just a day. Not yet. The time’s not right. I’ve got too much to lose. I don’t want to break Master League’s magic spell. I’m loving PES2010 right now, but how would I feel after experiencing FIFA10’s smooth animations and passing once again?

I will see how I feel at the end of this Master League season. A Treble would provide the perfect opportunity for a natural break. Maybe this season 13 will be the season?

NO. It’s not the season. Once again, I am out of the Division 1 Cup at the first time of asking. I have been defeated in the first round for the second season in a  row. How can I have been so careless?

My opponents were Man Utd. In the first leg at my place I went 0-1 down early on, but fought my way back to a 2-1 win. I felt relieved to have the aggregate lead going into the second leg. I fancied my chances, to be honest. Complacent? Possibly.

That second leg (box score on the right) was an unbelievably tough game. It was also a very fishy game. What I feared more than anything was conceding an early goal, because I knew that was the AI’s perfect scenario: it’d be ahead on the away goal and I’d have to batter at their goal to get anything. They did score early on, and I did batter their goal. But I got nothing. 1-0 it ended, 2-2 on aggregate, and I was out. 62% possession. 18 shots on goal. Out.

Maybe next season, hey? Yes. Maybe next season I’ll win the Treble…

In general news: guess which Regen Default player turned up in my Youth team? None other than The Myth of Castolo. His first Regen appearance was just a few seasons ago. I ignored him back then (I really don’t like Castolo) and he vanished, and that, I understood, was that: goodbye to Castolo, forever. I even wrote at the time, a touch gleefully:

“I won’t see Castolo again until PES2011. That’s fine by me. In fact I almost wish he would reappear, so I could once again have the pleasure of ignoring him.”

Is the game jogging my elbow, saying, “Oh, go on. Please…”?

Okay. I’ll bite. This time, I feel I’ve got time and space for Castolo. I have signed him up and he is part of my squad and part of my plans. I would like to nurse him up to true greatness, or at the very least to being a decent player.

So let Project Castolo commence! He’s particularly rubbish at the moment. I’ll be bringing him on as a sub in safe games, and maybe playing him from the start in any meaningless games that happen along. If he’s not at least a 70 OVR by the time he’s 22, I’ll sell him, and then that really will be the final curtain for me and Castolo.

Here’s my new squad. As well as Castolo I’ve signed Jamie Carragher, aged 18. He cost me £2.5m from his current club. I forget who that was now. Valencia? Dortmund? Isn’t Master League wonderful?

I didn’t buy anyone else. I tried my best for about 5 or 6 players rated above 90. Regen Scholes again—I’m a big Paul Scholes fan in PES as well as the real world. In my ML he’s now 22 and if he doesn’t come to me soon, I’ll stop trying.

I also tried for Pirlo, currently a talented 19-year-old at Inter, and also for Forlan, currently a similarly talented youngster elsewhere. No luck. What will it take to bring truly great players to my team? I really, really need to start winning some cups to go with my leagues…

New home and away kits. Away (right), it’s my first flirtation with a green kit in PES2010, after bad experiences in past PESes where I’ve been unable to see my players properly.

For the home kit (left) I altered the stripes’ colouring to a traditional sky blue and white, and went for white shorts instead of black. I love playing Barbie at the start of every season. Love it. Next season, I fancy going for something a bit different for both kits.

I’m doing well in the league. There’s been a traditional unexpected defeat that I felt helpless to prevent (but probably just defended badly and failed to concentrate properly, in truth). There’s also been a few puzzling, frustrating, 0-0 draws. All intermingled with satisfying, fully rounded matches. This game still does not feel easy to me.

There’s a familiar look to my qualifying group in the Champions League: Juventus, Aberdeen, and Rosenborg. I’ve played Juve and Rosenborg so far and beaten them both 1-0. I’m not going to have any trouble qualifying. But then it’s never the group stages that trouble me in this competition…

I learned a lot from my first—suspended—Master League career. So far I’m doing pretty well in season 1 of my re-imagined Master League—the one with all the proper teams inhabiting Division 2, and where I’ll do my best not to go broke due to too many negotiations.

Gutierrez is so far proving as good as he was in that first career. For me he’s definitely the new Castolo in Master League. I’ve scored my favourite goal of PES2010 so far with Gutierrez (I’ll get to that).

But what of the old Castolo, Castolo himself? For several PESes now I’ve had to watch with utter disbelief as the myth of Castolo has been shouted from the virtual rooftops. And meanwhile the player has just been no good. IMO Castolo’s enduring reputation in Pro Evolution Soccer is a clear example of the process whereby folklore, through ceaseless repetition, is transformed into canonical law within a community. As a phenomenon it’d be deserving of a place in any study of comparative mythology. Castolo would have to get his own chapter. An entire generation of PES players remains hypnotised by his myth.

Yes, yes, yes. I know he was brilliant in the early years of Master League. And I know he can still be decent now—as he has been, actually, for me at the start of this career.

The 34-year-old Castolo has come into my team and done well. I can’t deny it—but it doesn’t mean anything, okay? Ximelez and Macco and Ruskin are all doing well too. The other Defaults have to earn their daily bread and their plaudits; Castolo is deemed to be automatically entitled to them, just for being Castolo. That’s what puzzles me about the myth of Castolo.

I’m playing a 4-4-2 formation. My first-choice striker to partner Gutierrez up front started out as Ordaz, but the latter picked up an injury in training and was missing for the first month of the season. I brought in Castolo, grudgingly, hating every particle of the myth of Castolo. I was duly surprised at how fluidly he handled, and how he seems to have a knack of making things happen. He’s held onto his position, even with Ordaz returned to fitness. Castolo is currently one of my most influential players—after Oscar, my promoted Youth starlet, and Gutierrez, of course.

I’ve only scored 7 goals all season so far. Castolo got two of them and assisted on a few others. Here’s a clip showing one of his goals, a stooping 90th minute header from a corner that wonderfully equalised for me in a match that I looked certain to lose. The second goal is a strange clipped half-volley from Macco, also from a corner, that I include more for curiosity value:

Link:

After 17 matches, half the season, I’m in 8th place, just three points off the promotion spots. I’ve scored a pitiful amount of goals (7), but conceded a few as well (6). Conservative passing is the key to success with the Defaults. PES2010 has only now started to come alive for me and show its true depth. Until this current phase, I had thought PES2010 was just a serviceable, bog-standard, next-gen PES game, one that I’d be lustily slagging off by January. Currently, I love it, as much as I loved PES6(360) towards the end of this summer just gone.

I might still be slagging off PES2010(PS3) in January, of course. I just don’t know yet. Give me another few seasons of Master League, and time to assemble a squad of decent players. Then I’ll know.

There’s bags of potential for the future in PES2010. Could it be the first PES since PES6(PS2) to occupy me for the full calendar year? Football people talk about the value of a box-to-box midfielder. The value of an October-to-October PES could not be measured in mere gold.

And finally I have a special replay to show. The goal might not look like much to some, but I loved scoring it. There are three replays from different angles. It’s my favourite goal in all my time on PES2010 so far. It was scored with SuperGutierrez (right, and possibly about to take off and fly). It’s a clipped, placed, dipping, curling shot from about 20 yards that goes in off the post. Unlike many other PES goals, there’s no real power in this shot. It’s all about the placement. It was an important goal too, which made it even more special:

Link:

The first match in a new Master League career is always a little bit special. This one even more so. Advance news about PES2010 is still coming in, but one thing is certain: Master League as we knew it will be gone for good. It’s history.

Since roughly PES3/PES4, the Deafult team haven’t been much cop. The myth of Castolo persists, and will probably never go away. Only a very few determined PES players seem consistently able to do anything on the pitch with him, or with his mates. I’ll be getting rid of Castolo et al as soon as I possibly can.

For me over the past few years of ML, it’s been a slog to get to the first negotiation period, and then another slog to get from there to the end of the season. So it’s proving again.

I went out with my Default team ready to take on the world. It was a decent enough game. When your players are all fresh and—perhaps more importantly—when you are fresh, their handling seems a lot better. There seems to be more time on the ball, and overall the Default ML players don’t seem so bad. And, crazily, I got the result.

I won this first game of the season thanks to a strange own-goal midway through the second half. On a rare venture down the wings with Ruskin, I sent over a weak cross that bounced in the area nowhere near either of my strikers. And a CPU defender shinned the ball backwards into the roof of his own net. I’ll take that, thank you very much. If the rest of this season goes the usual way my first seasons tend to go, I might not score too many more goals.

And that’s how it went. In the rest of the games leading up to that all-important oasis, the mid-season negotiation period, I got one 0-0 draw, but I lost every other game.

Castolo was, as usual, a great steaming pile of crap. I started not playing him at all, preferring literally any other striker. Castolo nowadays is on a par with Ximelez and all the other stiffs in the Default squad. For me, only Ruskin, Macco, Ordaz, and possibly Valeny are worth bothering with, and even their days are numbered.

My team ranking is above only CS Sedan, the team I beat with that own-goal on Day 1 of the season.

I’m liking my 4-4-2 formation, though. I love the extra presence in midfield, and the extra threat I pose down the wings. Granted, there seem to be fewer options up front once I get there, but having a front two playing close to one another is an acceptable consolation prize.

I can’t wait to slot in some decent players and really start getting to grips with this 4-4-2. The only times in PES that I’ve ever played anything other than a 4-3-3 is when I’ve played online and just skipped straight to the match without fussing over formations. That must account for a lot less than 0.5% of my total PES playing time over the years. So 4-4-2 is new territory for me.

I’m bottom of the league, but that’s how I expected to be. It really has been a wretched start to the career. The D2 Cup came and went. I was knocked out 3-0 on aggregate. I really am back in the Master League saddle again…

Next up is the mid-season negotiations. I’m hoping to sell a few players and get a few players. The usual, then.