PES Chronicles

Ahhh, Europe. Continent of style, culture – and regular, world-engulfing, armed conflicts (we’re long overdue the next one). Europe is also home to a couple of other remarkable things: the greatest club football teams on Earth, and the Eurovision Song Contest.

Struggling against Chelsea and Real Madrid in my quest for the PES2008 Treble, I found myself calling to mind one of Eurovision’s most memorable tunes.The nature of the battle just seemed so evocative somehow.

In the League, there is no struggle: it’s a question of when, not if I win it. The two Cups are more delicately poised, as only Cup competitions can be.

———-

After drawing 2-2 away against Chelsea in the first leg of the D1 Cup semi-final, I was happy enough. Two away goals are nothing to be sniffed at. I went into the return leg completely confident of victory. This is a dangerous mindset to be in. Sometimes, even PES2008 will creep up and mug you when you go into a match thinking you only have to turn up to win it. I’ve come a cropper once or twice.

But I approached the second leg in the right frame of mind: fully concentrated and with a grim purpose. Now that I’ve decided to restart Master League once this season is over, I’m even more focused on winning the Treble.

I beat Chelsea 3-0 at my ground, winning the semi final 5-2 on aggregate.

It was not as straightforward as it sounds. I had to wait a long time for my first goal. Chelsea probed and harried. I had little time on the ball, and created no clear-cut chances. Chelsea missed a couple of good opportunities. As half-time approached I felt myself getting tense. While it was 0-0 there was always the chance they’d sneak a goal. I wanted a goal for myself to give me some insurance.

Then I got it. Traore collected the ball in the centre of midfield. I went off on a run, evaded a couple of defenders, then let one rip. It struck the far post and bounced across the goal, dropping inside the net on the other side:

I exhaled with relief. Now I was certain of the win. I killed off the match with two more quick goals.

So I am through to the Division 1 Cup Final. There I will play… Aston Villa. How very exciting.

————-

In the second leg of the European Cup semi final I was a lot less confident of progress. In the first leg I’d allowed Real Madrid to score two away goals at my ground. I did get two goals of my own to make it 2-2, but it still meant I had to score at Real Madrid’s place or crash out of the tournament, and thus fail at the Treble, and thus be unhappy.

Real Madrid impressed me a lot in the first leg. They played probably the best that any CPU team has played against me in PES2008.

They started just as impressively in the second leg. Their left back, Drenthe, is not only big and strong (more like a CB than a SB), he is also very quick and very deadly with crosses. He raced down my wing after about ten minutes and hoisted a ball into the box. There was Raul to nod home, making it 1-0 to Madrid on the night.

Oh, crap.

Still, I’d known that I’d have to score at least once in this game to win it. Now I had to score at least twice. Pesky away goals. Who invented them?

As the half wore on it looked as if it wasn’t going to be my night. I just had that feeling. The feeling you get from a PES match when everything is an ordeal. Simple passes that go astray; shots that scream miles over the bar, or straight down the keeper’s throat; tackles that miss completely or leave the opposition player flat on the ground as the referee reaches for his pocket.

I made it to half time with the score still at 1-0. Football is a game of two halves…

I got a goal soon after the break. I broke up yet another raid by Drenthe down my right side. (Note to self: must check out Drenthe at some point in Master League 2.0) He was out of position, and I lofted a delicious aerial through-ball over the top to Shimizu. The little fella’s jet-heeled boots left the Madrid defence trailing a long way behind. I was one-on-one with Casillas. Could I do it?

Yep, I could do it. Shimizu dinked the ball past the keeper. 1-1 on the night. 3-3 on aggregate. Madrid still had that one extra away goal. I needed another goal.

It didn’t look as if it was going to come. By the 80th minute, that awful feeling I mentioned earlier was a full-on conviction that this was it, the Treble was over, it was not meant to be, et cetera.

Duffy had come on for the exhausted Guimaraes, who had been chasing Drenthe up and down the pitch all night. I got the ball with Duffy near the halfway line, and went off on a little run toward Madrid’s net….

Goal! The magnificent Beerens strikes again. That’s about 20 goals for him in all competitions this season so far. At the point where Duffy breaks into the Madrid penalty area, I was a hair’s-breadth away from pressing Shoot, but thought better of it and passed to Beerens. I’m glad I did.

1-2 to me, and that’s how it ended. Real Madrid pressed ineffectually in the last few minutes. I wasn’t taking any chances. It was time to park a bus in in my penalty area. I pressed L2+Triangle to switch to my ultra-defensive 5-4-1, and kept it like that. The final whistle went. I was through.

I’ll play Barcelona in the final. Should be easy…

———–

In the League I’ve continued to win matches with scorelines like 6-3, 4-0, 3-1, 5-2, etc. I’m seven points clear with four games to play.

Another win or two will secure the title. A final goal difference of +100 – or more – should be achievable too.

I’m about to play two Cup Finals. Two wins in those games, and the Treble is mine.

This time tomorrow, one way or the other, it’ll all be over.

Going for Trebles in PES can be a nervy business. The league is strangely the easiest component of the three. Once you’re good enough to be going for a Treble, you’re usually good enough to be able to win enough games over a long season to take the title.

The trickiest part of the Treble is making progress in the two Cups.

Even in PES2008, you can’t afford to have a bad Cup game. If you do have a bad game, it’s better to have it in the first leg of the tie, so you get one more game in which to put it right.

If the bad game comes in the second leg of the tie, you’re out, and that’s the Treble gone in a puff of smoke, instantly. No second chances. It can be hard on the nerves.

I’ve played the first legs of the two Cup semi-finals. I had two fairly bad games in both of them.

First was the Division 1 Cup: Chelsea at their ground. The final score here was 2-2. I was lucky not to lose it 2-1; Mattsson popped up with an equaliser towards the end. The return leg at my ground should be tense, but with those two away goals under my belt I’m confident things will go my way.

If you’re going to have a bad game in the Cup, it’s better to have it in the first leg, and it’s even better if it’s away from home. That way, any goal you score in the otherwise bad game is an away goal. Any goal(s) that the other team scores aren’t away goals. Many’s the time I have been kicked out of Cups in PES because I conceded an away goal or two in a bad first leg game.

Which is why I’m shaking in my virtual football boots over the result of the other semi-final. The ECC semi-final against the mighty Real Madrid finished 2-2 as well.

The difference here is that it was at my ground. Real Madrid have two away goals. I will have to score at their ground, and it will be tough. Real Madrid were all over me for much of this first leg. They played incredibly well. I had to exert all my, uh, exertions just to keep up with them They took the lead, I equalised, they took the lead again, and I equalised again near the end. It was a strangely (even suspiciously) similar game to the Chelsea one.

As for the League… it’s hardly worth mentioning any more. Liverpool 2, Coventry City 5. Coventry City 6, Bolton 1. And plenty more. I’ve all but won it. I’m 7 points ahead of Man Yoo with seven games left to play. They might as well call a halt to it now and hand me the trophy. If I manage to lose enough games not to win this title, I’ll give up PES for good.

The random numbers cruncher at the dark heart of PES2008 threw me a great fixture to start season 2012: Chelsea away.

I groaned at first, then I realised it was an early Championship six-pointer (hopefully). If I’m not challenging for the title this season it’ll be because of carelessness. Better to get this game out of the way while the team is still fresh and hungry.

Having Jansen and Kaiser in the team seems to have made an instant difference. Jansen is marginally the best left-back I’ve played with yet (he’s only just better than Braafheid), but that difference is enough. Jansen was stopping everything down the left side, and making dangerous runs forward.

Kaiser is strong, reasonably quick, and sublimely skilful. Within the first 15 minutes of the game starting, he’d created two good chances and had one himself. Then he went one better, going on a nice little run to score his debut goal and my first goal of the season:

Shortly after, he was kind enough to get another goal – a scuffed kind of shot from the edge of the box – that made it 0-2 to me at half time. Schwarz nodded in the third from a corner late in the second half.

And that was that. Chelsea hardly had a shot on goal. I’m top of the league by goal difference after one game. I am satisfied with how season 2012 is going so far…

So I was finding this game easy, was I? Well. Playing against West Ham, they mugged me straight from kick-off and went 1-0 up. No problem, I thought. I can still score one more than you. And I did. I won the game 2-1. Wow. This Master League really is turning out to be the proverbial walk in the park…

Er. Not yet it’s not.

The first murmurings of rebellion within the CPU ranks came from Tottenham in the Division 1 Cup. Having won this trophy with relative ease last season, I felt protective of it. I was, as they say, up for the cup.

The game was at their ground. I didn’t lose the game. It ended 0-0. But it was… peculiar. It felt as if the game was destined to be a 0-0. So many games in PES always seem to be pre-determined in some way. Scripted.

Next up were the mighty Chelsea. The only thing I remember about playing them last year was that my then first-choice goalkeeper, Kim U Don’t, chose to run away from the goal when faced with a Chelsea striker one-on-one.

This game was an eye-opener. PES2008 had woken up and noticed me winning virtually every game at a canter. This was the game where all of that had to end.

Chelsea started in ‘God Mode’ and stayed that way. They won 1-0. I picked up my first red card of the season – Delgado, for two yellow card offences.

Despite the relentless pressure from Chelsea I managed to keep them at bay for the most part, and somehow managed to finish the match with 60% possession. They had 6 shots all game. I had a massive 21 shots, half of which were on target. Half of those were shots that could and arguably should have resulted in goals. In this game, they either whistled over or were miraculously slapped wide by Cech.

Yes, the goalkeeper was world class, and this was a world class team I was up against, but… something smelt strongly of fish. We’ve all been there. You know what I’m talking about.

Next up were Blackburn – at home – and another rather turgid, apparently pre-determined game that ended 0-0. I was starting to get paranoid.

Finally, I was thrashed by Manchester United. I took the lead early on with a jammy goal from Schwarz. Whew, I thought. Back on an even keel. But it was all downhill from there on.

The magic threesome of Ronaldo and Tevez and Rooney had fire in their boots. I found it impossible to defend against Ronaldo’s quick feet on the ball in and around my box. Before the game, he had apparently glugged a Potion of Invinciblilty.

Whatever I did, Ronaldo did the opposite. If I stood off him, he ran around me. If I double-teamed him, he ran between my players as they stood like statues, ignoring any and every button-press. If I slide-tackled him, he evaded the tackle. There was little or nothing wrong with my timing, mostly. I swear. It seemed to be a case of the CPU blatantly gaining an advantage by using its foreknowledge of what button combos and directions I was pressing.

We’ve seen it before, to a lesser extent, in PES5 and PES6. In those games, the CPU used its foreknowledge to evade slide tackles in particular areas of the pitch – usually the wings. In PES2008, when it wants to, the CPU does it all the time all over the pitch. (So I rather bitterly think, anyway.)

The resulting 10/10 stellar match performance from Ronaldo may be a fair reflection of the Portugeezer’s sublime real-life skills, but is it fair to a human player in a computer game? Sniff. Maybe I’ll man-mark him next time.

After this batch of games, I’ve dropped to 4th in the league table. Despite my paranoid misgivings about the CPU shamelessly abusing its knowledge of what I planned to do, I feel slightly relieved. I was hoping that PES2008 still had a curveball to throw me. It looks like it has plenty.