PES Chronicles

Barcelona—it was the first time that we met. Barcelona—how can I forget? The moment that you stepped into the room you—

That’s quite enough of that. Within a few weeks, Barcelona have been my opponents five times: once in the league, twice in the Division 1 Cup, and twice in the European Championships.

I’m finding that Barcelona are a strange package in this Master League career. I rarely have trouble beating them and they never seem to do anything special in the league. At the end of each season they’re usually hanging around in the top 6, but nowhere near challenging for the title. And I think it might all be my fault.

When I set up this league I omitted the English clubs. This sent all the English clubs’ players onto the open market, from where the existing clubs—spread across all four leagues—snapped them up. The end result is that in many cases the English club players seem to have diluted the strength of some clubs, Barcelona being one of them. Jamie Carragher is currently at Barcelona in my Master League. Now, I think Jamie Carragher in real life is a fine player, but in PES he could only really be considered an above-average player. Although Real Madrid, for one, seem to have been peculiarly boosted by their acquisition of the likes of Mark Noble (yes, Mark Noble).

I don’t know. Maybe Barcelona being mediocre isn’t all my fault. They sure are easy to beat, though. Most of the time. I beat them in the League. I absolutely thumped them in the Division 1 Cup. Leathered them. Hammered them into oblivion—as per the screenshot. (That’s a 9-3 scoreline to me, if it’s a bit too blurry.)

In the first of our two European group games, things weren’t much different—it was an easy 3-0 to me. In the second tie, though… I had a nightmare, and went down 0-1 early on. Then I started hacking away at the opposition as I like to do sometimes. Cutting to the chase, I was down to eight men by the second half. I was 0-1 behind and three players down against Barcelona. Even an average Barcelona should romp home to victory now. Things were not looking good.

But, while it was still only 0-1 to Barca, there was always a chance… I came to my senses. I rejigged my formation into an emergency 3-3-1, as seen in the diagram. I went with three CBs and pulled my DMF all the way back—as far back as he would go on the formation screen—to sit just in front of them. I pulled my two AMFs all the way back as well, to sit just behind the halfway line. I had a lone CF—Kim Cyun Hi—who was also sitting as deep as possible.

I brought on Komol to play as the left-sided AMF, despite it not being one of his positions. I’ve played with Komol for almost ten seasons now and I know I can rely on him to get me out of a tight spot. Immediately I took him off on a swashbuckling run across the pitch that led to a shot that hit the post… And Kim Cyun Hi was on hand to knock in the rebound.

1-1, and I was prepared to settle for that. I set my ATT/DEF level to full defence and prepared to see out the remaining ten minutes. I anticipated it being difficult. My plan was to defend doggedly and try to hold up the ball in midfield whenever I got possession. I would just run down the clock if I could.

However. Camacho—dear old Camacho (he’s 27 now!)—had the ball in the wide AMF position. The entire Barcelona team seemed to be swarming around my few attackers. The replay shows how many they were and how few I was. I felt in my water that Barca would win the ball back from me in a moment if I tried to keep passing it around. In PES, you end up just knowing when the CPU has decided to get the ball back. So I took a shot with Camacho, a speculative shot:

Yessssss……. 2-1 to me it ended. I’d scored twice in the second half whilst 0-1 down and having had three players sent off. Despite the sheer unrealism of it all, I was delirious. This is the kind of thing that I play PES for. I’d hate it if it happened too often, of course. But once in a while? It’s the feeling I get from occasions like those that keeps me playing PES.

Oh dear. I’ve finished season 2014 and it all went pretty badly wrong in the closing stages. This was supposed to be the season where I either won the Treble, or at least ended up with something to show for my efforts.

But I got knocked out of the Champions League at the pre-qualifying group stage and crashed out of the D1 Cup. I was doing okay in the League, snapping at Valencia’s heels. I was confident I could win the title at least this season. And I was doing great in the WEFA Masters Cup—the Euro consolation prize—where I met Marseille in the semi-final. I was regularly playing and beating Barca and Real Madrid in the league. So Marseille in Europe should be no trouble, right? Right?

First of all I was intrigued to see the formation that the CPU was using: a weird variant on the 4-3-3, a kind of 4-2-1-3 that I don’t recall seeing the CPU use before. Those two CMFs look to be too close together. The sole AMF will have his work cut out. The burden on the three forwards (two SS and a CF) is proportionally greater than in my (relatively) more sedate 4-3-3 formation.

I thought I was going to exploit Marseille’s strange formation to the full after a first leg at their ground that finished 1-2 to me. A win, and two away goals: I couldn’t help but regard the tie as effectively over. The second leg would have to be an utter disaster for me to go out now. The final here I come…

But no. Marseille turned me over 1-3 at my place, winning the semi-final 3-4 on aggregate. It was pretty pathetic. I have no idea what went wrong, really. I just seemed to be overwhelmed by frantic, fast, lethal, attacking CPU play, and none of my many raids forward came to anything.

Disappointed (this is now my eighth season without any kind of Cup win), I turned my attention back to the league. With four games to go I was a point behind Valencia, who I played next.

It was a tough, tough game. Both sides had chances. The very best chances fell to me, but it was one of those games where the woodwork and a super-goalie conspired to shut me out. 0-0 it finished, then, without any change at the top of the table. I had to win all my remaining games and hope Valencia slipped up. I was sure Valencia would at least draw one of their remaining games. My goal difference was superior. All I had to do was win all three games, and I could still do it.

I won my next game, then played Real Madrid. As I’ve mentioned once or twice, I’ve had a pretty good time against them in this division. Imagine my extreme chagrin, then, to go 0-1 down straight from their kickoff. I equalised. Real scored again. I equalised again. Real scored again. That’s how it went, all the way to the final whistle, with the final score 4-4.

Did I not like that. Not only was it an utterly stupid old-FIFA-style scoreline of the kind that I always hate to see in PES (thankfully not so much in the PSP/PS2 version of PES2008), but it let Valencia grab a three-point lead going into the final fixture. I now had to win and hope Valencia lost.

I didn’t win my last game. I lost it, pretty dismally—Osasuna beat me 2-1. I was trying too hard. But in the end it wouldn’t have mattered, as Valencia won their last game and took the Division 1 Championship by a whopping 6 points—the biggest gap there’s been between 1st and 2nd all season. I was, and am, displeased with myself.

So I end season 2014 completely empty-handed. It’s getting annoying. The only thing I’ve won in PES2008 so far (on PSP/PS2) is the Division 2 title, way back when. Nothing else. At least it means I still have everything left to play for. The hunger is still there, spurring me on. Roll on season 2015. Finishing second this season means I’ll go straight into the full WEFA Championship tournament—none of that pesky pre-qualifying nonsense. I’ll have a normal start to the season with just one game per week. As ever the Treble is the target and this time I think I’m really going to do it.

The most common scoreline in FIFA08 is 1-0. That also happens to be the most common scoreline in the real game of football. It’s day 4 of FIFA08 week on PES Chronicles, and I’m re-immersed in my Manager Mode career with Coventry City.

I started this career in the weeks leading up to the release of PES2008, then roughly abandoned it as PESday neared. Now here I am, back with my tail firmly between my legs…

Manager Mode on FIFA08: All the real teams, with the real kits, with the real players, playing in their real leagues. This much is well known. It’s never meant anything to me in the past and it means nothing to me now.

Gameplay is the most important element of a football game. The second most important element of a football game is gameplay. It’s also the third most important element.

After that point, yes, I’ll admit that presentation and licensing might count for something. However, there is evidence to show that some things might have been a little rushed…

————

I started out in the Championship with Coventry City, with the real squad made up of the likes of Ward, Tabb, and Adebola et al. Stunning mediocrities all. (Sorry, lads, if you’re reading this, but you are.)

I started on Semi-Pro. After a few games, I went down to Amateur. I didn’t come back up to Semi-Pro for about ten, twenty games. Something like that. It took me that long to get comfortable with the core mechanics of FIFA08.

I was mid-table near the end of my first season, but then I put together a run of results that lifted me up to 5th place and a playoff spot. Er, in theory anyway. Imagine my extreme disgruntlement when no actual playoffs took place. Suddenly it was the next season. I was still in the Championship. The third-placed team had automatically been promoted to the Premier League.

Bad, EA. BAD. I trust that there have been red faces among the development team, and not a few smacked bottoms. The English league non-playoff fiasco is just one of a number of niggling annoyances in FIFA08. Thankfully, the majority of them are off the field of play. Read ‘em and weep, Seabass.

Here’s my current FIFA08 First XI:

Unlike my PES2008 First XI, this one is pretty constant. You can upgrade your club’s fitness coach stage by stage (at a progressively higher cost) to the point where your players are almost always fully fit before every game. Extreme fixture congestion only has a slight impact.

Until I started to get good players, I played a 3-5-2 in almost every game. FIFA08 is all about the build-up play. It’s a rare goal that isn’t preceded by a good deal of passing - thus, midfield dominance is a necessity.

I have a pretty solid bench as well. Among them are the likes of O’Shea, Pedro Mendes, Stevanovic, and Chamakh. I’ve never heard of some of them but they’re very good…

It’s pretty easy to accumulate enough cash to build a great team with Coventry City within a few seasons. I got automatic promotion in season 2008-09, and started battling it out in the Premier League. I have finished 8th, 5th, and 3rd in the past three seasons. Currently, in the middle of season 2012-13, I’m challenging for three trophies: League, Cup, and European Cup.

PES2008’s holy grail in Master League is the Treble. FIFA08 offers the crazily ambitious football gamer a mouth-watering prize, at least in the English League: the Quadruple.

Sadly, the Quadruple is over for me in this season. I have just been knocked out of the League Cup by Burnley. My team of quasi-galacticos was out-muscled and outplayed by the Championship upstarts in a grim encounter at Turfmoor.

That can happen in FIFA08 - a bit too often, actually, for my liking. You can play superbly against Chelsea one week and beat them 2-0 ( a great result in FIFA08), then take on Northampton Town in the Cup, struggle to keep the score at 0-0, and finally win 8-7 on penalties after extra time. I know because it happened to me on Saturday night.

Michael Owen is my top striker. I’ve had him for two full seasons now and he’s scored 20+ in both. Another roll-of-the-eyes FIFA08 moment: after signing him, Owen ‘held a press conference’ where he gushed about playing for Coventry City and said he had supported the club ever since he was a boy… Groan.

Anyway. Suspension of disbelief and all that. Here’s Owen executing a lovely scissors kick in the box:

Those close-range scissors-kick goals are among FIFA08’s most common goal types. Long punts over the keeper’s head and weak headers are among the others. It’s not a perfect game, not by any means. Sometimes you’ll score a common type of goal for a few games running. You’ll think you’ve got FIFA08 cracked and it ain’t so tough after all. Then you’ll find yourself locked at 0-0 and having to sweat to craft a proper goal, and know that you’re still learning the ropes.

I signed Mathieu just to see what he would be like in FIFA08 after trying and failing to get him for so long in my PES2008 ML career. He’s been great. Here’s a goal from Mathieu in FIFA08:

Yes, that’s a pretty ordinary goal by PES standards. By FIFA08 standards it’s a rarity, and one to treasure. The shooting is that difficult.